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Prove that if S is a finite set and the cardinality of S = n, then the cardinality of the powerset is equal to 2ⁿ.

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Final answer:

If S is a finite set with cardinality n, the cardinality of its powerset P(S) is 2^n.

Step-by-step explanation:

The cardinality of a set is a measure of the number of elements in the set. The cardinality of a set S, denoted as |S|, is a non-negative integer.

If S is a finite set and the cardinality of S is n, then we can prove that the cardinality of the powerset of S, denoted as P(S), is equal to 2^n.

To prove this, we can use the concept of binary representation. Each element in S can be represented by a 0 or a 1 in a binary string. For each element, if it is included in a subset, we assign a 1 to its position in the binary string; otherwise, we assign a 0.

Since there are n elements in S, there are 2^n possible binary strings of length n. Each binary string corresponds to a unique subset of S. Therefore, the cardinality of P(S) is equal to 2^n.

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