Let $S$ be a set. Let $\operatorname{Part}(S)$ be the set of all partitions on $S$ . Since each partition is a cover of $S$ , $\operatorname{Part}(S)$ is partially ordered by covering refinement relation, so that $P_1\preceq P_2$ if for every $a\in P_1$ , there is a $b\in P_2$ such that $a\subseteq b$ . We say that a partition $P$ is finer than a partition $Q$ if $P\preceq Q$ , and coarser than $Q$ if $Q\preceq P$ .

Proof. For any set $\mathcal{P}$ of partitions $P_i$ of $S$ , the intersection $\bigcap \mathcal{P}$ is a partition of $S$ . Take the meet of $P_i$ to be this intersection. Next, let $\mathcal{Q}$ be the set of those partitions of $S$ such that each $Q\in \mathcal{Q}$ is coarser than each $P_i$ . This set is non-empty because $S\times S\in \mathcal{Q}$ . Take the meet $P'$ of all these partitions which is again coarser than all partitions $P_i$ . Define the join of $P_i$ to be $P'$ and the proof is complete.

Remarks.

• The top element of $\operatorname{Part}(S)$ is $S\times S$ and the bottom is the diagonal relation on $S$ .
• Correspondingly, the partition lattice of $S$ also defines the lattice of equivalence relations $\Delta$ on $S$ .
• Given a family $\lbrace E_i\mid i\in I\rbrace$ of equvialence relations on $S$ , we can explicitly describe the join $E:=\bigvee E_i$ of $E_i$ , as follows: $a\equiv b\pmod E$ iff there is a finite sequence $a=c_1,\ldots,c_n=b$ such that \begin{eqnarray}c_k\equiv c_{k+1} \pmod {E_{i(k)}}\qquad\mbox{ for }k=1,\ldots,n-1.\end{eqnarray}It is easy to see this definition makes $E$ an equivalence relation. To see that $E$ is the supremum of the $E_i$ , first note that each $E_i\le E$ . Suppose now $F$ is an equivalence relation on $S$ such that $E_i\le F$ and $a\equiv b\pmod E$ . Then we get a finite sequence $c_k$ as described by (1) above, so $c_k\equiv c_{k+1}\pmod F$ for each $k\in \lbrace 1,\ldots,n-1\rbrace$ . Hence $a\equiv b\pmod F$ also.