Union and intersection in Python - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Union and Intersection of Sets

📖 Scenario: You are organizing a community event and have two lists of people who signed up for two different activities. You want to find out who signed up for either activity and who signed up for both.

🎯 Goal: Build a Python program that finds the union and intersection of two sets of names.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create two sets with exact names

Create a variable for union of the two sets

Create a variable for intersection of the two sets

Print the union and intersection sets

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Finding union and intersection is useful when combining or comparing groups of people, items, or data in real life, like event planning or inventory management.

💼 Career

Understanding set operations is important in data analysis, software development, and database management where you often need to combine or filter data.

1

Create two sets of names

Create a set called activity1 with these exact names: 'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'. Also create a set called activity2 with these exact names: 'Bob', 'Diana', 'Edward'.

Python

# Create the sets activity1 and activity2 with the exact names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create sets and separate names with commas.

2

Create union and intersection variables

Create a variable called union_set that stores the union of activity1 and activity2. Create another variable called intersection_set that stores the intersection of activity1 and activity2.

Python

activity1 = {'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'}
activity2 = {'Bob', 'Diana', 'Edward'}
# Create union_set and intersection_set variables
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the .union() method for union and .intersection() method for intersection.

3

Print the union and intersection sets

Write two print statements: one to display union_set and one to display intersection_set.

Python

activity1 = {'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'}
activity2 = {'Bob', 'Diana', 'Edward'}
union_set = activity1.union(activity2)
intersection_set = activity1.intersection(activity2)
# Print union_set and intersection_set
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print() to show the sets on the screen.

4

Run and check the output

Run the program and check that the output shows the union set with all unique names and the intersection set with names common to both activities.

Python

activity1 = {'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'}
activity2 = {'Bob', 'Diana', 'Edward'}
union_set = activity1.union(activity2)
intersection_set = activity1.intersection(activity2)
print(union_set)
print(intersection_set)
# Run the program to see the output

Need a hint?

The first printed set should have all five unique names. The second printed set should have only 'Bob'.