MATH 1302 – Assignment
Unit 1
Question
1. If A is the set of people who got jobs in the IT sector and B is the set of people who got jobs.
Describe the people in each of the following sets:
(a) A ∩ B (b) A ∪ B (c) A − B (d) B − A
Answer:
For the sets A and B:
(a) A∩B represents the set of people who both got jobs in the IT sector and got jobs.
(b) A∪B represents the set of people who either got jobs in the IT sector or got jobs or both.
(c) A−B represents the set of people who got jobs in the IT sector but did not get jobs in another
sector.
(d) B−A represents the set of people who got jobs but did not get jobs in the IT sector.
Question
2. Suppose that A is the set of people living in the USA and B is the set of people having a house in
Canada. Express each of the following sets in terms of A and B using set operations:
(a) the set of people living in the USA and having a house in Canada (b) the set of people living in the
USA who are not having a house in Canada (c) the set of people who either live in the USA or have a
house in Canada (d) the set of people who are either non-US residents or do not own a house in
Canada.
Answer:
Expressing sets in terms of A and B:
(a) The set of people living in the USA and having a house in Canada is A∩B.
(b) The set of people living in the USA who do not have a house in Canada is A−B.
(c) The set of people who either live in the USA or have a house in Canada is A∪B.
(d) The set of people who are either non-US residents or do not own a house in Canada is (A′∩B′),
where ′A′ represents the complement of A (non-US residents) and ′B′ represents the complement of
B (do not own a house in Canada).
Question:
3. An IT company offered two benefits for the employees. 750 of the employees take the privilege of
cabs. 900 of them take breakfast privilege. If 530 employees take both benefits, how many
employees work in the company if there are 60 employees who do not take any benefits? Which
concept do you use to calculate the number of employees in the company? You can either use a
Venn diagram or you can use the principle of inclusion and exclusion.
Answer:
The Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion is a counting technique used to find the number of elements
in the union of multiple sets. It is particularly useful when dealing with overlapping sets. The
principle is based on the idea of systematically including and excluding elements from the sets
involved.
We are dealing with three sets of employees:
A: the set of employees who take the cab privilege. = 750
B: the set of employees who take the breakfast privilege. = 900
C: the set of employees who take no privilege. = 60
The number of employees who take both benefits is A∩B, which is 530.
Now, we use the principle of inclusion and exclusion to find the total number of employees who take
at least one of the benefits (AUB):
∣A∪B∣=∣A∣+∣B∣−∣A∩B∣
Substituting the given values:
∣A∪B∣=750+900−530
This gives us the total number of employees who take at least one of the benefits, which is 1120.
In the context of the Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion, this set C is essentially the complement of
the union of sets A and B (i.e., C=(A∪B)′). The complement of a set includes all elements that are not
in the set.
So, when finding the total number of employees in the company, it involves adding the number of
employees who take at least one privilege (∣A∪B∣) and the number of employees who take none of
the privileges (∣C∣). The total is then given by
Total employees=A∪B + C
Substituting the values:
Total employees=1120+60
So, the final answer is that there are 1180 employees in the company.
References:
Doerr, A., & Levasseur, K. (2022). Applied discrete structures.
