[Math] What exactly are equivalence classes

abstract-algebradiscrete mathematicsequivalence-relations

What exactly are equivalence classes? Suppose I have an equivalence relation $\sim$ on some set $X$ we denote this as $x \sim y$. The equivalence classes are then $[x] = \{y \in X : y \sim x\}$.

However I have struggled as to what this actually mean, does this mean that for some $y \in X$ the equivalence classes are just the objects that satisfy the symmetric property?

Best Answer

Equivalence classes are sets of elements which are all equivalent between them. For instance if the equivalence relation $\sim$ is "having the same sex", then there are two equivalence classes in the world: boys and girls (if we forget the ambiguous cases). In the same way, if the equivalence relation is "being born the same year", then each year yields a different equivalence class of all the people from this year.

To sum up, an equivalence relation cuts the universe into "potatoes" of elements: inside a potato, all elements are equivalent to each other, and a potato is called an equivalence class.