Equivalence Relation

An equivalence relation is a way to group things that share a certain property, so each group contains items that are considered similar or related in that way. For a relation to be an equivalence relation, it must be three things: it should be reflexive (every item relates to itself), symmetric (if one item relates to another, the reverse is true), and transitive (if one item relates to a second, and the second relates to a third, then the first relates to the third). These properties ensure that the items can be partitioned into distinct, well-defined groups where all members are related by this specific criteria.