The Set Data Structure and Set Theory

A big portion of data structures used in modern programming are directly translated from mathematics. One crucial example is the set data structure and its operations, derived from Set Theory. Understanding this data structure requires at least some prior knowledge of the mathematical perspective of the sets, as well as of Set Theory itself.

In this tutorial, we are going to give an introduction to Sets as a data structure, how they work, what operations can be performed with it, as well as what they could be used for. Furthermore, we are going to explain Set Theory from a mathematical point of view and give it meaning from a computer science perspective.