Countable set

Common card · No. 225189

A mathematical set is countable if either it is finite or it can be put in one to one correspondence with the set of natural numbers. Equivalently, a set is countable if there exists an injective function from it into the natural numbers; this means that each element in the set may be associated to a unique natural number, or that the elements of the set can be counted one at a time, although the counting may never finish due to an infinite number of elements. In more technical terms, assuming the axiom of countable choice, a set is countable if its cardinality (the number of elements of the set) is not greater than that of the natural numbers. A countable set that is not finite is said to be countably infinite; for example the set of all natural numbers N {\displaystyle \mathbb {N} } or all rational numbers Q {\displaystyle \mathbb {Q} } . The concept is attributed...

Read on Wikipedia