How are empty sets and null sets different?
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Imagine a motel with 10 rooms. You ask how many are vacant. You’re told 3 rooms are empty: room #2, room #7, room #8. A set to represent this is “3 rooms: [2, 7, 8]”.
Imagine the same motel with no vacant rooms. A set to represent this is “0 rooms: []”.
Imagine a fast food restaurant. You ask how many vacancies there. Sir, this is a Wendy’s – we don’t have vacancies. A set to represent this is “null”.
Imagine the same motel with some vacant rooms. Your parents ask you to find out, but you get distracted playing. They ask you later – you tell them you don’t know. A set to represent this is “null”.
There are many situations where “empty set” and “no set” CAN be used to impart meaningful information. “null” is a convenient placeholder for “the absence of a thing” or “this has no meaningful data” or “we were unable to build the dataset for you”. It’s optional, but useful.
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