Church Encoding
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Church Encoding
In mathematics, Church encoding is a means of representing data and operators in the lambda calculus. The Church numerals are a representation of the natural numbers using lambda notation. The method is named for Alonzo Church, who first encoded data in the lambda calculus this way. Terms that are usually considered primitive in other notations (such as integers, booleans, pairs, lists, and tagged unions) are mapped to higher-order functions under Church encoding. The Church-Turing thesis asserts that any computable operator (and its operands) can be represented under Church encoding. In the untyped lambda calculus the only primitive data type is the function. Use A straightforward implementation of Church encoding slows some access operations from O(1) to O(n), where n is the size of the data structure, making Church encoding impractical. Research has shown that this can be addressed by targeted optimizations, but most functional programming languages instead expand their in ...
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Mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. A ''proof'' consists of a succession of applications of deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms, andin case of abstraction from naturesome basic properties that are considered true starting points of ...
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Arithmetic
Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers— addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th century, Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano formalized arithmetic with his Peano axioms, which are highly important to the field of mathematical logic today. History The prehistory of arithmetic is limited to a small number of artifacts, which may indicate the conception of addition and subtraction, the best-known being the Ishango bone from central Africa, dating from somewhere between 20,000 and 18,000 BC, although its interpretation is disputed. The earliest written records indicate the Egyptians and Babylonians used all the elementary arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as early as 2000 BC. These artifacts do not always reveal the specific process used for solving problems, but t ...
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Computable Number
In mathematics, computable numbers are the real numbers that can be computed to within any desired precision by a finite, terminating algorithm. They are also known as the recursive numbers, effective numbers or the computable reals or recursive reals. Equivalent definitions can be given using μ-recursive functions, Turing machines, or λ-calculus as the formal representation of algorithms. The computable numbers form a real closed field and can be used in the place of real numbers for many, but not all, mathematical purposes. Informal definition using a Turing machine as example In the following, Marvin Minsky defines the numbers to be computed in a manner similar to those defined by Alan Turing in 1936; i.e., as "sequences of digits interpreted as decimal fractions" between 0 and 1: The key notions in the definition are (1) that some ''n'' is specified at the start, (2) for any ''n'' the computation only takes a finite number of steps, after which the machine produces the ...
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Integer
An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign (−1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the language of mathematics, the set of integers is often denoted by the boldface or blackboard bold \mathbb. The set of natural numbers \mathbb is a subset of \mathbb, which in turn is a subset of the set of all rational numbers \mathbb, itself a subset of the real numbers \mathbb. Like the natural numbers, \mathbb is countably infinite. An integer may be regarded as a real number that can be written without a fractional component. For example, 21, 4, 0, and −2048 are integers, while 9.75, , and  are not. The integers form the smallest group and the smallest ring containing the natural numbers. In algebraic number theory, the integers are sometimes qualified as rational integers to distinguish them from the more general algebraic integers ...
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Fixed-point Combinator
In mathematics and computer science in general, a '' fixed point'' of a function is a value that is mapped to itself by the function. In combinatory logic for computer science, a fixed-point combinator (or fixpoint combinator) is a higher-order function \textsf that returns some fixed point of its argument function, if one exists. Formally, if the function ''f'' has one or more fixed points, then : \textsf\ f = f\ (\textsf\ f)\ , and hence, by repeated application, : \textsf\ f = f\ (f\ ( \ldots f\ (\textsf\ f) \ldots))\ . Y combinator In the classical untyped lambda calculus, every function has a fixed point. A particular implementation of fix is Curry's paradoxical combinator Y, represented by : \textsf = \lambda f. \ (\lambda x.f\ (x\ x))\ (\lambda x.f\ (x\ x))\ .Throughout this article, the syntax rules given in Lambda calculus#Notation are used, to save parentheses.For an arbitrary lambda term ''f'', the fixed-point property can be validated by beta reducing the left- and ...
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Division (mathematics)
Division is one of the four basic operations of arithmetic, the ways that numbers are combined to make new numbers. The other operations are addition, subtraction, and multiplication. At an elementary level the division of two natural numbers is, among other possible interpretations, the process of calculating the number of times one number is contained within another. This number of times need not be an integer. For example, if 20 apples are divided evenly between 4 people, everyone receives 5 apples (see picture). The division with remainder or Euclidean division of two natural numbers provides an integer ''quotient'', which is the number of times the second number is completely contained in the first number, and a ''remainder'', which is the part of the first number that remains, when in the course of computing the quotient, no further full chunk of the size of the second number can be allocated. For example, if 21 apples are divided between 4 people, everyone receives ...
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Monus
In mathematics, monus is an operator on certain commutative monoids that are not groups. A commutative monoid on which a monus operator is defined is called a commutative monoid with monus, or CMM. The monus operator may be denoted with the − symbol because the natural numbers are a CMM under subtraction; it is also denoted with the \mathop symbol to distinguish it from the standard subtraction operator. Notation Definition Let (M, +, 0) be a commutative monoid. Define a binary relation \leq on this monoid as follows: for any two elements a and b, define a \leq b if there exists an element c such that a + c = b. It is easy to check that \leq is reflexive and that it is transitive. M is called ''naturally ordered'' if the \leq relation is additionally antisymmetric and hence a partial order. Further, if for each pair of elements a and b, a unique smallest element c exists such that a \leq b + c, then is called a ''commutative monoid with monus'' and the ''monus'' ...
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Subtraction
Subtraction is an arithmetic operation that represents the operation of removing objects from a collection. Subtraction is signified by the minus sign, . For example, in the adjacent picture, there are peaches—meaning 5 peaches with 2 taken away, resulting in a total of 3 peaches. Therefore, the ''difference'' of 5 and 2 is 3; that is, . While primarily associated with natural numbers in arithmetic, subtraction can also represent removing or decreasing physical and abstract quantities using different kinds of objects including negative numbers, fractions, irrational numbers, vectors, decimals, functions, and matrices. Subtraction follows several important patterns. It is anticommutative, meaning that changing the order changes the sign of the answer. It is also not associative, meaning that when one subtracts more than two numbers, the order in which subtraction is performed matters. Because is the additive identity, subtraction of it does not change a number. Subtraction ...
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Exponentiation
Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the '' base'' and the ''exponent'' or ''power'' , and pronounced as " (raised) to the (power of) ". When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to repeated multiplication of the base: that is, is the product of multiplying bases: b^n = \underbrace_. The exponent is usually shown as a superscript to the right of the base. In that case, is called "''b'' raised to the ''n''th power", "''b'' (raised) to the power of ''n''", "the ''n''th power of ''b''", "''b'' to the ''n''th power", or most briefly as "''b'' to the ''n''th". Starting from the basic fact stated above that, for any positive integer n, b^n is n occurrences of b all multiplied by each other, several other properties of exponentiation directly follow. In particular: \begin b^ & = \underbrace_ \\[1ex] & = \underbrace_ \times \underbrace_ \\[1ex] & = b^n \times b^m \end In other words, when multiplying a base raised to ...
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Multiplication
Multiplication (often denoted by the cross symbol , by the mid-line dot operator , by juxtaposition, or, on computers, by an asterisk ) is one of the four elementary mathematical operations of arithmetic, with the other ones being addition, subtraction, and division. The result of a multiplication operation is called a ''product''. The multiplication of whole numbers may be thought of as repeated addition; that is, the multiplication of two numbers is equivalent to adding as many copies of one of them, the ''multiplicand'', as the quantity of the other one, the ''multiplier''. Both numbers can be referred to as ''factors''. :a\times b = \underbrace_ For example, 4 multiplied by 3, often written as 3 \times 4 and spoken as "3 times 4", can be calculated by adding 3 copies of 4 together: :3 \times 4 = 4 + 4 + 4 = 12 Here, 3 (the ''multiplier'') and 4 (the ''multiplicand'') are the ''factors'', and 12 is the ''product''. One of the main properties of multiplication is ...
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Addition
Addition (usually signified by the Plus and minus signs#Plus sign, plus symbol ) is one of the four basic Operation (mathematics), operations of arithmetic, the other three being subtraction, multiplication and Division (mathematics), division. The addition of two Natural number, whole numbers results in the total amount or ''summation, sum'' of those values combined. The example in the adjacent image shows a combination of three apples and two apples, making a total of five apples. This observation is equivalent to the Expression (mathematics), mathematical expression (that is, "3 ''plus'' 2 is Equality (mathematics), equal to 5"). Besides counting items, addition can also be defined and executed without referring to concrete objects, using abstractions called numbers instead, such as integers, real numbers and complex numbers. Addition belongs to arithmetic, a branch of mathematics. In algebra, another area of mathematics, addition can also be performed on abstract objects su ...
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Successor Function
In mathematics, the successor function or successor operation sends a natural number to the next one. The successor function is denoted by ''S'', so ''S''(''n'') = ''n'' +1. For example, ''S''(1) = 2 and ''S''(2) = 3. The successor function is one of the basic components used to build a primitive recursive function. Successor operations are also known as zeration in the context of a zeroth hyperoperation: H0(''a'', ''b'') = 1 + ''b''. In this context, the extension of zeration is addition, which is defined as repeated succession. Overview The successor function is part of the formal language used to state the Peano axioms, which formalise the structure of the natural numbers. In this formalisation, the successor function is a primitive operation on the natural numbers, in terms of which the standard natural numbers and addition is defined. For example, 1 is defined to be ''S''(0), and addition on natural numbers is defined recursively by: : This can be used ...
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