equivalence relations divides sets into partitions whose union is the set but if some elements of the set aren't in the relation how does this work?

72 Views Asked by At

The proposition given is:- every equivalence relation induces a partition of the underlying set, the parts of the partition being the equivalence classes, i.e. the equivalence classes are pair-wise disjoint subsets whose union is the whole set.

Take a set $A = \{a,b,c,d,e\}$ and a relation on $A$, $R = \{(a,a),(b,b),(c,c),(a,c),(c,a)\}$. $R$ is equivalent because it's reflexive, symmetric and transitive. $R$ will only give the equivalent classes $[a]$, $[b]$ and $[c]$ which are $\{a,c\}$ and $\{b\}$. the union of these equivalent classes is $\{a,b,c\}$ which is not equal to $A$ so how does the above proposition work?