Question

List all the elements of the following set: set F = {x : x is a letter of the word, “MISSISSIPPI”}.

Answer 1

Hint: To solve this question, we should know that while writing the elements of a set, the repeating alphabets are written only one time. For example, if we consider the word, “PAPER”, then the letter P is repeating two times, so while representing it in a set, we will write P only once in the set element. So, the set elements will be, {P, A, E, R}.

Complete step-by-step answer:

We have been asked in the given question to list all the elements of the given set, which is, set F = {x : x is a letter of the word, “MISSISSIPPI”}. We know that while writing the elements of a set, we consider the repeating words only once. As we can see, the given word, “MISSISSIPPI” contains a lot of repeating words. So, let us find out the number of repetitions. In the given word, “MISSISSIPPI”, we can see that S is repeating 4 times, I is repeating 4 times and P is repeating 2 times. So, we have to consider them only once while representing the elements of the set. So, we get the letters of the given word as, M, I, S, and P.
Therefore, we have only 4 elements in the set of the word ‘MISSISSIPPI' and we get the set F = {M, I, S, P}.

Note: The students may list the elements of this set as, {M, I, S, S, I, S, S, I, P, P, I}, as the question mentions to list all the elements of the word, “MISSISSIPPI”. This is not at all correct. The students should be aware that the repeating letters are listed only once in the elements of a set.