How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
The product rule: , and
Statement
- If and are finite then is finite and (The cardinality of a finite set).
- Let and let be finite sets. Write Then is finite and , the right-hand product being the -valued one of Finite sums and finite products of natural numbers, and in .
At clause 2 reads : there is exactly one function with domain , the empty function, and the empty product is . Both sides are computed, not stipulated.
Statement references
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Finite sets , and a finite list of finite sets. Recall and .
Induction (The principle of mathematical induction).
Cardinality (The cardinality of a finite set): is the unique natural with ; ; and a bijection transports finiteness and cardinality.
The sum rule (The sum rule: a finite disjoint union is finite with and , and a sum over a finite index set splits along a partition): a family of pairwise disjoint finite sets indexed by a finite set has finite union, whose cardinality is the sum over that index set of the cardinalities.
Sums over a finite index set (The sum over a finite index set, and its product form): for a constant .
Recursion clause for the -valued product (Finite sums and finite products of natural numbers, and in ): and .
Maps (Injection, surjection, bijection, Equinumerous sets, and ): a map with a two-sided inverse is a bijection, and composites of bijections are bijections.
Arithmetic: multiplication of naturals is commutative (Multiplication is commutative, Multiplication of natural numbers); and , , (On the order is membership: , The natural numbers (von Neumann)).
Proof
The slices. For put . The map is a bijection of onto , with inverse the first projection, so is finite with ; and the family is pairwise disjoint, since an element of has second coordinate . Moreover .
Base case of clause 2, at . A function with domain is the empty function and there is exactly one of them, so , which is finite with cardinality because is a bijection of onto it; and by [L5].
Inductive hypothesis for clause 2: fix and assume that for every finite list of finite sets the set is finite with cardinality .
Clause 1. By step 1.1 and [L3], is finite and , using [L4] for the constant summand and commutativity for the last step.
Inductive step for clause 2. Let be finite. Define by , where is the restriction of to . Its inverse is , a function with domain because ; the two composites are the identity, so is a bijection. By the hypothesis of step 1.3 and clause 1, the codomain is finite with cardinality , and transport carries this to .
By step 1.2, step 3.1 and induction, clause 2 holds for every .
Clause 1 is step 2.1 and clause 2 is step 4.1.
Remarks
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No arithmetic is needed for clause 1. Slicing over and applying the sum rule replaces the usual bijection , which would have to be proved bijective by division with remainder. Division with remainder lives later in the reading order, so the slicing argument is not merely shorter here, it is the one available.
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The empty cases are computed. With and arbitrary, clause 1 reads , which is right because . With , clause 2 reads . Neither is a convention.
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The infinite analogue of clause 1 fails in the shape a reader expects. A product of two infinite sets need not be strictly larger than either factor: (). The companion page records that as a false statement, with finiteness located as the hypothesis that fails.
Depends on
The cardinality of a finite set
The sum rule: a finite disjoint union is finite with and , and a sum over a finite index set splits along a partition
The sum over a finite index set, and its product form
Finite sums and finite products of natural numbers, and in
Injection, surjection, bijection
Equinumerous sets, and
Multiplication of natural numbers
Multiplication is commutative
The principle of mathematical induction
On the order is membership:
The natural numbers (von Neumann)