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I am trying to figure out the word/operation to what is not in the intersection of two sets but is in their union.

How I am going about this now is $$(A \cup B) - (A \cap B)$$

Is there a better way to go about this?

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    B is the intersection? You mean &? Do you mean A,B as sets or as singletons?2011-06-27
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    This is called the [symmetric difference](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric_difference), BTW. But that's just a name. It's not clear from your question what "better" means, what kinds of sets you're working with, what kinds of operations you can do efficiently, etc.2011-06-27
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    Are you sure you mean $\{A\}\cup\{B\}$ and $\{A\}\cap\{B\}$, and not $A\cup B$ and $A\cap B$? If you mean what you wrote, then you get either $\emptyset$ if $A=B$, and $\{A,B\}$ if $A\neq B$. If you did not mean to have the curly brackets, you want the symmetric difference, which is often denoted by $A\Delta B$.2011-06-27
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    There are many alternative ways of writing the symmetric difference (when you don't have those curly brackets). E.g., for any two sets $A$ and $B$, $$(A\cup B)-(A\cap B) = (A-B)\cup(B-A) = (A\cap B^c)\cup (B\cap A^c).$$2011-06-27

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$$(A \cup B) - (A \cap B)$$ Is called the symmetric difference and is often denoted by $$ A \Delta B $$

It is analogous to the logical "exclusive or" operation (as union is analogous to "or" and intersection is analogous to "and").

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    It's frequently shortened to xor (or XOR).2011-06-28
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$(A \cap B^c)\cup (B\cap A^c)$