logo

The Number of Subsets of a Finite Set with n Elements 📂Lemmas

The Number of Subsets of a Finite Set with n Elements

Formula

For a finite set XX, if n(X)=nn(X)=n then n(P(X))=2nn(P(X))=2^{ n }.

Derivation

The number of subsets selecting kk elements out of nn elements is nCk_{ n }{ C }_{ k }. Using the binomial theorem to sum up all possible cases, k=0nnCk=2n\displaystyle \sum _{ k=0 }^{ n }{_{ n }{ C }_{ k } }=2^{ n }, hence n(P(A))=2nn(P(A))=2^{ n }.