need help understanding covering sets (powers of sets)

Hi, the book I'm reading does not give any nice examples (it just gives an example in words, can't see it action)

lets say N = {1, 2, 3} and M = {a, b}

can anyone take me through the procedure of finding M^N using Cantor's concept of covering sets? In other words i need to find N/M (don't confuse '/' with complement, it doesn't mean that in this case.. well if you know about covering sets, you'll probably know that anyway, so there's not much point in the contents of these brackets)

Help is hugely appreciated

Not an expert, but as no one else has replied. From a quick google:

M^N is the cardinality of the set of all functions from N to M.

We can represent a function as a set of ordered pairs, where the first element is in N and the second in M.

So, one function might be {(1,a),(2,b),(3,b)}, and there are 2^3=8 such possible functions, making up the set of all such functions, thus:

{ {(1,a),(2,b),(3,b)} , {(1,b),(2,a),(3,b)}, ...}

Caveat: My terminology/symbology may not be accurate, as I'm not overly familiar with this. But, hope that's useful.

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