Answer: There are ways of doing this
Hi!
To solve this problem we can think in term of binary numbers. Let's start with an example:
n=5, A = {1, 2 ,3}, B = {4,5}
We can think of A as 11100, number 1 meaning "this element is in A" and number 0 meaning "this element is not in A"
And we can think of B as 00011.
Thinking like this, the empty set is 00000, and [n] =11111 (this is the case A=empty set, B=[n])
This representation is a 5 digit binary number. There are of these numbers. Each one of this is a possible selection of A and B. But there are repetitions: 11100 is the same selection as 00011. So we have to divide by two. The total number of ways of selecting A and B is the
.
This can be easily generalized to n bits.