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Combinatorial Species
In combinatorial mathematics, the theory of combinatorial species is an abstract, systematic method for deriving the generating functions of discrete structures, which allows one to not merely count these structures but give bijective proofs involving them. Examples of combinatorial species are (finite) graphs, permutations, trees, and so on; each of these has an associated generating function which counts how many structures there are of a certain size. One goal of species theory is to be able to analyse complicated structures by describing them in terms of transformations and combinations of simpler structures. These operations correspond to equivalent manipulations of generating functions, so producing such functions for complicated structures is much easier than with other methods. The theory was introduced, carefully elaborated and applied by the Canadian group of people around André Joyal. The power of the theory comes from its level of abstraction. The "description format" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Combinatorics
Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many applications ranging from logic to statistical physics and from evolutionary biology to computer science. Combinatorics is well known for the breadth of the problems it tackles. Combinatorial problems arise in many areas of pure mathematics, notably in algebra, probability theory, topology, and geometry, as well as in its many application areas. Many combinatorial questions have historically been considered in isolation, giving an ''ad hoc'' solution to a problem arising in some mathematical context. In the later twentieth century, however, powerful and general theoretical methods were developed, making combinatorics into an independent branch of mathematics in its own right. One of the oldest and most accessible parts of combinatorics is gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphism
In mathematics, particularly in category theory, a morphism is a structure-preserving map from one mathematical structure to another one of the same type. The notion of morphism recurs in much of contemporary mathematics. In set theory, morphisms are functions; in linear algebra, linear transformations; in group theory, group homomorphisms; in topology, continuous functions, and so on. In category theory, ''morphism'' is a broadly similar idea: the mathematical objects involved need not be sets, and the relationships between them may be something other than maps, although the morphisms between the objects of a given category have to behave similarly to maps in that they have to admit an associative operation similar to function composition. A morphism in category theory is an abstraction of a homomorphism. The study of morphisms and of the structures (called "objects") over which they are defined is central to category theory. Much of the terminology of morphisms, as well as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Up To
Two Mathematical object, mathematical objects ''a'' and ''b'' are called equal up to an equivalence relation ''R'' * if ''a'' and ''b'' are related by ''R'', that is, * if ''aRb'' holds, that is, * if the equivalence classes of ''a'' and ''b'' with respect to ''R'' are equal. This figure of speech is mostly used in connection with expressions derived from equality, such as uniqueness or count. For example, ''x'' is unique up to ''R'' means that all objects ''x'' under consideration are in the same equivalence class with respect to the relation ''R''. Moreover, the equivalence relation ''R'' is often designated rather implicitly by a generating condition or transformation. For example, the statement "an integer's prime factorization is unique up to ordering" is a concise way to say that any two lists of prime factors of a given integer are equivalent with respect to the relation ''R'' that relates two lists if one can be obtained by reordering (permutation) from the other. As anot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commutativity
In mathematics, a binary operation is commutative if changing the order of the operands does not change the result. It is a fundamental property of many binary operations, and many mathematical proofs depend on it. Most familiar as the name of the property that says something like or , the property can also be used in more advanced settings. The name is needed because there are operations, such as division and subtraction, that do not have it (for example, ); such operations are ''not'' commutative, and so are referred to as ''noncommutative operations''. The idea that simple operations, such as the multiplication and addition of numbers, are commutative was for many years implicitly assumed. Thus, this property was not named until the 19th century, when mathematics started to become formalized. A similar property exists for binary relations; a binary relation is said to be symmetric if the relation applies regardless of the order of its operands; for example, equality is s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Associativity
In mathematics, the associative property is a property of some binary operations, which means that rearranging the parentheses in an expression will not change the result. In propositional logic, associativity is a valid rule of replacement for expressions in logical proofs. Within an expression containing two or more occurrences in a row of the same associative operator, the order in which the operations are performed does not matter as long as the sequence of the operands is not changed. That is (after rewriting the expression with parentheses and in infix notation if necessary), rearranging the parentheses in such an expression will not change its value. Consider the following equations: \begin (2 + 3) + 4 &= 2 + (3 + 4) = 9 \,\\ 2 \times (3 \times 4) &= (2 \times 3) \times 4 = 24 . \end Even though the parentheses were rearranged on each line, the values of the expressions were not altered. Since this holds true when performing addition and multiplication on any real ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empty Set
In mathematics, the empty set is the unique set having no elements; its size or cardinality (count of elements in a set) is zero. Some axiomatic set theories ensure that the empty set exists by including an axiom of empty set, while in other theories, its existence can be deduced. Many possible properties of sets are vacuously true for the empty set. Any set other than the empty set is called non-empty. In some textbooks and popularizations, the empty set is referred to as the "null set". However, null set is a distinct notion within the context of measure theory, in which it describes a set of measure zero (which is not necessarily empty). The empty set may also be called the void set. Notation Common notations for the empty set include "", "\emptyset", and "∅". The latter two symbols were introduced by the Bourbaki group (specifically André Weil) in 1939, inspired by the letter Ø in the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. In the past, "0" was occasionally used as a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disjoint Union
In mathematics, a disjoint union (or discriminated union) of a family of sets (A_i : i\in I) is a set A, often denoted by \bigsqcup_ A_i, with an injection of each A_i into A, such that the images of these injections form a partition of A (that is, each element of A belongs to exactly one of these images). A disjoint union of a family of pairwise disjoint sets is their union. In category theory, the disjoint union is the coproduct of the category of sets, and thus defined up to a bijection. In this context, the notation \coprod_ A_i is often used. The disjoint union of two sets A and B is written with infix notation as A \sqcup B. Some authors use the alternative notation A \uplus B or A \operatorname B (along with the corresponding \biguplus_ A_i or \operatorname_ A_i). A standard way for building the disjoint union is to define A as the set of ordered pairs (x, i) such that x \in A_i, and the injection A_i \to A as x \mapsto (x, i). Example Consider the sets A_0 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Isomorphism
In category theory, a branch of mathematics, a natural transformation provides a way of transforming one functor into another while respecting the internal structure (i.e., the composition of morphisms) of the categories involved. Hence, a natural transformation can be considered to be a "morphism of functors". Informally, the notion of a natural transformation states that a particular map between functors can be done consistently over an entire category. Indeed, this intuition can be formalized to define so-called functor categories. Natural transformations are, after categories and functors, one of the most fundamental notions of category theory and consequently appear in the majority of its applications. Definition If F and G are functors between the categories C and D , then a natural transformation \eta from F to G is a family of morphisms that satisfies two requirements. # The natural transformation must associate, to every object X in C, a morphism \eta_X : F(X) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuple
In mathematics, a tuple is a finite ordered list (sequence) of elements. An -tuple is a sequence (or ordered list) of elements, where is a non-negative integer. There is only one 0-tuple, referred to as ''the empty tuple''. An -tuple is defined inductively using the construction of an ordered pair. Mathematicians usually write tuples by listing the elements within parentheses "" and separated by a comma and a space; for example, denotes a 5-tuple. Sometimes other symbols are used to surround the elements, such as square brackets "nbsp; or angle brackets "⟨ ⟩". Braces "" are used to specify arrays in some programming languages but not in mathematical expressions, as they are the standard notation for sets. The term ''tuple'' can often occur when discussing other mathematical objects, such as vectors. In computer science, tuples come in many forms. Most typed functional programming languages implement tuples directly as product types, tightly associated with algebr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exponential Generating Series
In mathematics, a generating function is a way of encoding an infinite sequence of numbers () by treating them as the coefficients of a formal power series. This series is called the generating function of the sequence. Unlike an ordinary series, the ''formal'' power series is not required to converge: in fact, the generating function is not actually regarded as a function, and the "variable" remains an indeterminate. Generating functions were first introduced by Abraham de Moivre in 1730, in order to solve the general linear recurrence problem. One can generalize to formal power series in more than one indeterminate, to encode information about infinite multi-dimensional arrays of numbers. There are various types of generating functions, including ordinary generating functions, exponential generating functions, Lambert series, Bell series, and Dirichlet series; definitions and examples are given below. Every sequence in principle has a generating function of each type (except t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cardinality
In mathematics, the cardinality of a set is a measure of the number of elements of the set. For example, the set A = \ contains 3 elements, and therefore A has a cardinality of 3. Beginning in the late 19th century, this concept was generalized to infinite sets, which allows one to distinguish between different types of infinity, and to perform arithmetic on them. There are two approaches to cardinality: one which compares sets directly using bijections and injections, and another which uses cardinal numbers. The cardinality of a set is also called its size, when no confusion with other notions of size is possible. The cardinality of a set A is usually denoted , A, , with a vertical bar on each side; this is the same notation as absolute value, and the meaning depends on context. The cardinality of a set A may alternatively be denoted by n(A), , \operatorname(A), or \#A. History A crude sense of cardinality, an awareness that groups of things or events compare with other grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Power Set
In mathematics, the power set (or powerset) of a set is the set of all subsets of , including the empty set and itself. In axiomatic set theory (as developed, for example, in the ZFC axioms), the existence of the power set of any set is postulated by the axiom of power set. The powerset of is variously denoted as , , , \mathbb(S), or . The notation , meaning the set of all functions from S to a given set of two elements (e.g., ), is used because the powerset of can be identified with, equivalent to, or bijective to the set of all the functions from to the given two elements set. Any subset of is called a ''family of sets'' over . Example If is the set , then all the subsets of are * (also denoted \varnothing or \empty, the empty set or the null set) * * * * * * * and hence the power set of is . Properties If is a finite set with the cardinality (i.e., the number of all elements in the set is ), then the number of all the subsets of is . This fact as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
