An equivalence relation on is a reflexive relation (), a symmetric relation (), and a transitive relation (, ). Its equivalence class at is . Because is a reflexive relation, every class is nonempty and every belongs to its own class, so the classes cover . If and share an element , symmetry and transitivity give . For every , transitivity then gives , so ; exchanging gives equality. Thus distinct classes are disjoint. The equivalence classes form a set partition of . On the empty set, the empty family is the corresponding partition.
A binary relation on a set is a subset of its Cartesian product; means . It is an equivalence relation when it is a reflexive relation, a symmetric relation, and a transitive relation:
An equivalence relation partitions into equivalence classes: two elements belong to the same class exactly when they are related.
For the value condition, a function agrees with itself outside the empty exceptional set, proving the reflexive relation property. Interchanging the two functions preserves equality, so the same exceptional finite set proves the symmetric relation property.
Suppose is related to and to , with exceptional finite sets and . Points of might be absent from , so merely taking would miss a real issue. Use instead
This is a finite set contained in : the first two terms are finite by hypothesis and is finite by the domain condition. If , then and neither original exception occurs, so . The domain condition is also preserved, as proved in the preceding scope. Thus the full relation is a transitive relation, and
Finite domains cause no problem: one may take the whole intersection as the exceptional set. Both conditions are needed for equivalence of partial functions modulo finite changes.
The first condition concerns the domains: their symmetric difference must be a finite set. The original PDF prints this condition and the agreement condition together; the converted TeX omits both. The two existing solution scopes are used here to prove the domain and value parts of the single equivalence relation assertion.
Domain agreement is a reflexive relation because , and a symmetric relation because . For the transitive relation property, membership can differ between and only if it differs between and or between and . Thus
A set union of two finite sets is finite, so the domain condition passes through a chain of related pairs. This is the domain part of equivalence of partial functions modulo finite changes.
Choose a basis of the finite-dimensional vector space and let be the maximum absolute coordinate. For any norm , the triangle inequality gives
so is continuous in the coordinate topology. On the compact set , the positive continuous function attains a positive minimum and a finite maximum . By absolute homogeneity,
This proves the equivalence of norms in finite dimensions: every norm is equivalent to the maximum norm, and transitivity of these inequalities proves that any two norms on a finite-dimensional vector space are Lipschitz equivalent.
Because , the relation is reflexive. If and , then
so it is transitive. It is not symmetric: for
one has but not .