Determine the properties of an equivalence relation.
I'm not sure if I am understanding this correctly.
A. $\{(a,b)|\ a$ and $ b$ are the same age$\}$
B.$\{(a,b)|\ a$ and $ b$ have the same parents$\}$
C. $\{(a,b)|\ a$ and $ b$ share a common parent$\}$
D. $\{(a,b)|\ a$ and $ b$ have met$\}$
A. Reflexive
Symmetric - If $a$ is the same age as $b$ then $b$ if the same age as $a$
Transitive - If $a$ is the same age as $b$ and $b $ is the same age as $c,$ then $a$ is the same age as $c.$
B. Reflexive
Symmetric - If $a$ has the same parents as $b,$ then $b $ has the same parents as $a$
Transitive - If $a$ has the same parents as $ b,$ and be has the same parents as $c$, then $a$ has the same parents as $c.$
C. Reflexive
Symmetric - If $a$ shares a common parent with $b$, then b shares a common parent with a
NOT Transitive - If $a$ shares a common parent with $b$, and $b$ shares a common parent with $c,$ then a doesn't necessarily have to have a common parent with $c.$
D. Reflexive
Symmetric - If $a$ has met $b$, then $b$ has met $a$
NOT transitive - If $a$ has met $b$ and $b$ has met $c$ then $a$ has met $ c$
To be an equivalence relation the set has to have all three properties, correct? If the set has the Reflexive and Transitive property, but is Antisymmetric we say it is a partially ordered set?
EDIT:
D. $\{(a,b)|\ a$ and $ b$ speak a common language$\}$
Reflexive Symmetric Not Transitive
I Added this one because similar to D. I wasn't sure about the Reflexive property. Can one speak a common language with themselves? I originally thought it was Reflexive, but now believe it may not be.
This looks correct to me.
Another way to approach this is to try to partition people based on the relation.
So for part A, you can partition people into distinct sets:
Etc. For part B, you can part consider all pairs of people in the population:
For the last two examples, these partitions don't exist.
A partition is a division of a set into several non-overlapping sets. For example, you can partition $\{A, B, C, D, E\}$ into $\bigg\{\{A, B\}, \{C, E\}, \{D\}\bigg\}$ but not $\bigg\{\{A, B, C\}, \{C, D, E\}\bigg\}$. The second is not a partition since the sets overlap at $C$.
For part A, if you have Alice aged 20, Bob aged 21, and Carol aged 20, then you can partition $\{\text{Alice}, \text{Bob}, \text{Carol}\}$ as $\bigg\{\{\text{Alice}, \text{Carol}\}, \{\text{Bob}\}\bigg\}$ : one set for every aged 20, on for every aged 21, etc.
Every equivalence relation induces a partition like this. That is one way to check your results.