I have been wondered the definition of cardinality and number of elements. One mathematician told me that one can't said that the cardinality or size of the set $\{1\}$ is one, it should be said that the number of elements in the set is one. I guess that his opinion is that there is no term size in mathematics. Is these true? On the other hand, if we have an infinite set like $\mathbb Z$, can we say that the number of elements of $\mathbb Z$ is infinite or is the term "number of elements" used only in finite sets?
[Math] Number of elements vs cardinality vs size
cardinalssoft-questionterminology
Best Answer
The question you need to ask yourself is "what is the meaning of the notion number?"
Natural numbers can be used to measure size, length, etc. while rational numbers measure ratio between two integers, real numbers measure length... what do complex numbers measure?
In mathematics we allow ourselves to define new ways of measuring things, and usually we refer to the values of these measures as numbers. Indeed there is no real difference between the length of a $100$ meters running track, and a $100$ meters long hot dog...
When measuring the size of a set we came up with a clever way to discuss infinite sets. This way is "cardinality", and the cardinal of a set represents in a good sense the "number of elements in the set". So it has a perfectly good meaning to say that a set has $\aleph_0$ many elements, or that a set is of size $\aleph_1$.