Associative Law for infinitely many sets

associativityelementary-set-theoryproof-explanationproof-writing

I know the associative law for (union or intersection) of two sets and I know why it works.

Applying this rule many times, will show us intuitively that this rule also holds for infinitely many sets.

Although, what would be an adequate proof for this generalization? Is it sufficient to say that we know that it works for two sets and it works for all the pairs, so it works for all sets?

Sorry for the confusion. Intuitively seems right, but I want to understand it formally. Thank you!

Best Answer

If $\mathscr{A}$ is any family of sets, we can define

$$\bigcup\mathscr{A}=\{x:\exists A\in\mathscr{A}\,(x\in A)\}$$

and

$$\bigcap\mathscr{A}=\{x:\forall A\in\mathscr{A}\,(x\in A)\}\;.$$

These definitions specialize to the usual definition of $A\cup B$ and $A\cap B$ when $\mathscr{A}$ contains just two sets, and these definitions are independent of any parenthesizing or other organization of the members of $\mathscr{A}$ into smaller subcollections. Thus, the order and grouping of the sets makes no difference to the union and intersection of the family.