WRITE THE CHECKING TABLE FOR CLOSURE PROPERTY UNDER ADDITION
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The Closure Property
Properties of Sets Under an Operation
Mathematicians are often interested in whether or not certain sets have particular properties under a given operation. One reason that mathematicians were interested in this was so that they could determine when equations would have solutions. If a set under a given operation has certain general properties, then we can solve linear equations in that set, for example.
There are several important properties that a set may or may not satisfy under a particular operation. A property is a certain rule that holds if it is true for all elements of a set under the given operation and a property does not hold if there is at least one pair of elements that do not follow the property under the given operation.
Talking about properties in this abstract way doesn't really make any sense yet, so let’s look at some examples of properties so that you can better understand what they are. In this lecture, we will learn about the closure property.
The Property of Closure
A set has the closure property under a particular operation if the result of the operation is always an element in the set. If a set has the closure property under a particular operation, then we say that the set is “closed under the operation.”
It is much easier to understand a property by looking at examples than it is by simply talking about it in an abstract way, so let's move on to looking at examples so that you can see exactly what we are talking about when we say that a set has the closure property:
First let’s look at a few infinite sets with operations that are already familiar to us:
a) The set of integers is closed under the operation of addition because the sum of any two integers is always another integer and is therefore in the set of integers.
b) The set of integers is not closed under the operation of division because when you divide one integer by another, you don’t always get another integer as the answer. For example, 4 and 9 are both integers, but 4 ÷ 9 = 4/9. 4/9 is not an integer, so it is not in the set of integers!