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Reflexive and Symmetric Relations

Explore the concepts of reflexive and symmetric relations on sets. Understand their definitions, properties, and how to test them with Python code examples. This lesson helps you recognize these fundamental relation types, check their validity on given sets, and deepen your grasp of relations essential in set theory.

For an arbitrary set AA, let’s define some important types of relations on AA.

Reflexive relation

A relation RR on AA is a reflexive relation if (a,a)R(a,a)\in R for every element that is aAa\in A. If there is an element bAb\in A so that (b,b)∉R(b,b) \not\in R, then RR is not a reflexive relation. Let’s take the set M={α,β,γ}M= \{\alpha, \beta, \gamma\} and consider the following relations:

R1R_1, R2R_2, R3R_3 ...