New partial orderings =o=o, =p=p and =H=H are defined, studied and compared on the set HH of finite subsets of the unit interval with special emphasis on the last one. Since comparing two sets of the same cardinality is a simple issue, the idea for comparing two sets A and B of different cardinalities n and m respectively using =H=H is repeating their elements in order to obtain two series with the same length. If lcm(n,m)lcm(n,m) is the least common multiple of n and m we can repeat every element of A lcm(n,m)/mlcm(n,m)/m times and every element of B lcm(n,m)/nlcm(n,m)/n times to obtain such series and compare them (Definition 2.2). (H,=H)(H,=H) is a bounded partially ordered set but not a lattice. Nevertheless, it will be shown that some interesting subsets of (H,=H)(H,=H) have a lattice structure. Moreover in the set BB of finite bags or multisets (i.e. allowing repetition of objects) of the unit interval a preorder =B=B can be defined in a similar way as =H=H in HH and considering the quotient set View the MathML sourceB¿=B/~ of BB by the equivalence relation ~ defined by A~BA~B when A=BBA=BB and B=BAB=BA, View the MathML source(B¿,=B) is a lattice and (H,=H)(H,=H) can be naturally embedded into it.

Peer Reviewed