Mathematical notation: Select indexes from an ordered set of numbers

index-notationmathematical modeling

Let's say we have an ordered/indexed set of numbers $X = \{5,2,3,8,5,4,1\}$ and I want to select indexes of numbers from the set $X$ where number is greater than $4$.

Indexes start from $1$ and go to $n$ such that $x_i \in X$ and $i \in \{1, … , |X|\}$.

In this example we have:
$x_1 = 5, x_2 = 2, x_3 = 3, x_4 = 8, x_5 = 5, x_6 = 4, x_7 = 1$ or simply $X = \{5,2,3,8,5,4,1\}$
Therefore: $n = |X| = 7$ and $i \in \{1,2,3,4,5,6,7\}$.

Now the main part of the problem: I need to mathematically represent the set of selected indexes from the indexed set of numbers $X$, for numbers which are greater than $4$. Let's call this set of indexes $I$. In this example $I = \{1,4,5\}$ because $x_1 > 4, x_4 > 4, x_5 > 4$.

How can we mathematically represent that the set $I$ contains only indexes $i$ of numbers $x_i$ where $x_i > 4$?

Best Answer

I might be misunderstanding what the question is asking, but how about something like:

$$I = \{i+1 \in \mathbb{N}_{|X|}\ |\ x_{i+1} > 4 \}$$

Where $\mathbb{N}_{|X|}$ denotes the natural numbers modulo $|X|$, so $\{0,1,...,|X|-1\}$.

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