the Cartesian product of a finite number of countable sets is countable
Theorem 1
The Cartesian product of a finite number of countable sets is countable.
Proof:Let be countable sets and let.Since each is countable, there exists an injective function.The function defined by
where is the th primeis, by the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, a bijection between and a subset of and therefore is also countable.
Note that this result does not (in general) extend to theCartesian product of a countably infinite collection
of countablesets. If such a collection contains more than a finite number of setswith at least two elements, then Cantor’s diagonal argument can beused to show that the product
is not countable.
For example, given , the set consists of all countably infinite sequences of zeros and ones.Each element of can be viewed as a binary fraction and cantherefore be mapped to a uniquereal number in and is, of course, not countable.