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What is the subset of the letters in 'numbers'?

I thought it meant to make a word out of the letters in 'numbers' so I tried to make a word out of it, but I couldn't make a word and so I don't understand the task.

Please help me this is my homework. If I don't bring it to school by Friday I'll be put in detention for 5 hours.

Martin Thoma
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David
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    It seems rather strange to give 5 hours detention for getting one math question wrong. There may be more to this story. Also, `numbers' is not a set, it is a word. Hence it has no subsets. Please ask the precise question you were asked, not a rephrasing. – vadim123 Apr 30 '14 at 17:29
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    @vadim123 I'm guessing the question means the set {n, u, m, b, e, r, s}. Still, you can't find the subset of this set as there are 129 of them with the empty set. As vadim123 said, this question seems rephrased. – RandomUser Apr 30 '14 at 17:41
  • @RandomUser shouldn't that be $2^6 = 128$ subsets? But, still, the point still stands--the use of "the" subset is not appropriate here. – apnorton May 01 '14 at 16:44
  • @anorton You are correct. Typo on my part. – RandomUser May 02 '14 at 14:17

1 Answers1

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When you say all letters are a-z, you can write the set of all letters as

$$\{a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z\}$$

The subset of all letters that are in the word "numbers" is

$$\{n,u,m,b,e,r,s\}$$

Side note

There are much more letters:

Egor Skriptunoff
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Martin Thoma
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