empty set

American  

[emp-tee set] / ˈɛmp ti ˈsɛt /

noun

plural

empty sets

1. Mathematics. in set theory, the set containing no elements.

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empty set Scientific  

/ ĕmp′tē /

1. Mathematics The set that has no members or elements.

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Other Word Forms

• nonempty set noun

Example Sentences

I was halfway through attaching my probes when I realized that Regan had jumped into one of the chairs in the empty set on the left.

From Literature

Remembering what had happened last time, I waited to see which empty set of chairs Elliot would choose.

From Literature

Some are empty, set up at the crack of dawn and then abandoned for hours on end, until the owners actually want to use them.

From BBC

Other examples are the axiom of the empty set, which states that a set without elements exists, and the axiom of pairing, according to which two sets with the same elements are equal.

From Scientific American

After all, work in this field is based on a few basic assumptions that are as simple as possible—such as that there is an empty set—from which results as complicated as Gödel's incompleteness theorems can be inferred.

From Scientific American