Equivalence Class - Properties

Properties

Every element x of X is a member of the equivalence class . Every two equivalence classes and are either equal or disjoint. Therefore, the set of all equivalence classes of X forms a partition of X: every element of X belongs to one and only one equivalence class. Conversely every partition of X comes from an equivalence relation in this way, according to which x ~ y if and only if x and y belong to the same set of the partition.

It follows from the properties of an equivalence relation that

x ~ y if and only if = .

In other words, if ~ is an equivalence relation on a set X, and x and y are two elements of X, then these statements are equivalent:

  • .

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