Proving general property of power set of set difference

elementary-set-theory

I'm taking an introductory course in set theory. We were presented with the following property for the power set of the difference between sets:

$$\mathcal{P}(A\setminus B ) \subseteq (\mathcal{P}(A)\setminus\mathcal{P}(B)) \cup \ \{\varnothing\}$$

The prove was not given or attempted. I can formulate multiple examples that satisfy the propoerty but can't come up with a formal demonstration. I would like to know how it can be proved, as I don't know how to start with the demonstration.

Best Answer

It is not clear where exactly you're running into trouble, but from the fact that you can generate examples, it seems that you at least understand the statement. With that said, I suspect the following hint might be useful.

To prove that $\mathcal{P}(A\setminus B ) \subseteq (\mathcal{P}(A)\setminus\mathcal{P}(B)) \cup \ \{\varnothing\}$, it suffices to show that for any $S \in \mathcal P(A \setminus B)$ with $S \neq \varnothing$, $S \in \mathcal P(A) \setminus \mathcal P(B)$. In other words: show that if $S \subseteq A \setminus B$ with $S \neq \varnothing$, then it holds that $S \subseteq A$ and it is not the case that $S \subseteq B$. It is useful to note that if $A \setminus B$ is non-empty, then there exists at least one element $x$ such that $x \in A$ but $x \notin B$.

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