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Mathematics
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Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry, rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclids Elements. Galileo Galilei said, The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and it is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth, carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. Benjamin Peirce called mathematics the science that draws necessary conclusions, David Hilbert said of mathematics, We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules, rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise. Albert Einstein stated that as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics, Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns, in Babylonian mathematics elementary arithmetic first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have many and diverse. Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics. Mathematics has since been extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today, the overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs. The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω, while the modern Greek equivalent is μαθαίνω, in Greece, the word for mathematics came to have the narrower and more technical meaning mathematical study even in Classical times
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Euler diagram
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An Euler diagram is a diagrammatic means of representing sets and their relationships. Typically they involve overlapping shapes, and may be scaled, such that the area of the shape is proportional to the number of elements it contains and they are particularly useful for explaining complex hierarchies and overlapping definitions. They are often confused with the Venn diagrams, unlike Venn diagrams which show all possible relations between different sets, the Euler diagram shows only relevant relationships. The first use of Eulerian circles is commonly attributed to Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, in the United States, both Venn and Euler diagrams were incorporated as part of instruction in set theory as part of the new math movement of the 1960s. Since then, they have also adopted by other curriculum fields such as reading as well as organizations. Euler diagrams consist of simple closed shapes in a two dimensional plane that depict a set or category. How or if these shapes overlap demonstrates the relationships between the sets, there are only 3 possible relationships between any 2 sets, completely inclusive, partially inclusive, and exclusive. This is also referred to as containment, overlap or neither or, especially in mathematics, it may be referred to as subset, intersection, curves whose interior zones do not intersect represent disjoint sets. Two curves whose interior zones intersect represent sets that have common elements, a curve that is contained completely within the interior zone of another represents a subset of it. Venn diagrams are a more form of Euler diagrams. A Venn diagram must contain all 2n logically possible zones of overlap between its n curves, representing all combinations of inclusion/exclusion of its constituent sets. Regions not part of the set are indicated by coloring them black, in contrast to Euler diagrams, when the number of sets grows beyond 3 a Venn diagram becomes visually complex, especially compared to the corresponding Euler diagram. The difference between Euler and Venn diagrams can be seen in the following example, the Venn diagram, which uses the same categories of Animal, Mineral, and Four Legs, does not encapsulate these relationships. Traditionally the emptiness of a set in Venn diagrams is depicted by shading in the region, Euler diagrams represent emptiness either by shading or by the absence of a region. Often a set of conditions are imposed, these are topological or geometric constraints imposed on the structure of the diagram. For example, connectedness of zones might be enforced, or concurrency of curves or multiple points might be banned, in the adjacent diagram, examples of small Venn diagrams are transformed into Euler diagrams by sequences of transformations, some of the intermediate diagrams have concurrency of curves. However, this sort of transformation of a Venn diagram with shading into an Euler diagram without shading is not always possible. There are examples of Euler diagrams with 9 sets that are not drawable using simple closed curves without the creation of unwanted zones since they would have to have non-planar dual graphs
3.
Cartesian product
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In Set theory, a Cartesian product is a mathematical operation that returns a set from multiple sets. That is, for sets A and B, the Cartesian product A × B is the set of all ordered pairs where a ∈ A and b ∈ B, products can be specified using set-builder notation, e. g. A table can be created by taking the Cartesian product of a set of rows, If the Cartesian product rows × columns is taken, the cells of the table contain ordered pairs of the form. More generally, a Cartesian product of n sets, also known as an n-fold Cartesian product, can be represented by an array of n dimensions, an ordered pair is a 2-tuple or couple. The Cartesian product is named after René Descartes, whose formulation of analytic geometry gave rise to the concept, an illustrative example is the standard 52-card deck. The standard playing card ranks form a 13-element set, the card suits form a four-element set. The Cartesian product of these sets returns a 52-element set consisting of 52 ordered pairs, Ranks × Suits returns a set of the form. Suits × Ranks returns a set of the form, both sets are distinct, even disjoint. The main historical example is the Cartesian plane in analytic geometry, usually, such a pairs first and second components are called its x and y coordinates, respectively, cf. picture. The set of all such pairs is thus assigned to the set of all points in the plane, a formal definition of the Cartesian product from set-theoretical principles follows from a definition of ordered pair. The most common definition of ordered pairs, the Kuratowski definition, is =, note that, under this definition, X × Y ⊆ P, where P represents the power set. Therefore, the existence of the Cartesian product of any two sets in ZFC follows from the axioms of pairing, union, power set, let A, B, C, and D be sets. × C ≠ A × If for example A =, then × A = ≠ = A ×, the Cartesian product behaves nicely with respect to intersections, cf. left picture. × = ∩ In most cases the above statement is not true if we replace intersection with union, cf. middle picture. Other properties related with subsets are, if A ⊆ B then A × C ⊆ B × C, the cardinality of a set is the number of elements of the set. For example, defining two sets, A = and B =, both set A and set B consist of two elements each. Their Cartesian product, written as A × B, results in a new set which has the following elements, each element of A is paired with each element of B. Each pair makes up one element of the output set, the number of values in each element of the resulting set is equal to the number of sets whose cartesian product is being taken,2 in this case
4.
Natural number
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In mathematics, the natural numbers are those used for counting and ordering. In common language, words used for counting are cardinal numbers, texts that exclude zero from the natural numbers sometimes refer to the natural numbers together with zero as the whole numbers, but in other writings, that term is used instead for the integers. These chains of extensions make the natural numbers canonically embedded in the number systems. Properties of the numbers, such as divisibility and the distribution of prime numbers, are studied in number theory. Problems concerning counting and ordering, such as partitioning and enumerations, are studied in combinatorics, the most primitive method of representing a natural number is to put down a mark for each object. Later, a set of objects could be tested for equality, excess or shortage, by striking out a mark, the first major advance in abstraction was the use of numerals to represent numbers. This allowed systems to be developed for recording large numbers, the ancient Egyptians developed a powerful system of numerals with distinct hieroglyphs for 1,10, and all the powers of 10 up to over 1 million. A stone carving from Karnak, dating from around 1500 BC and now at the Louvre in Paris, depicts 276 as 2 hundreds,7 tens, and 6 ones, and similarly for the number 4,622. A much later advance was the development of the idea that 0 can be considered as a number, with its own numeral. The use of a 0 digit in place-value notation dates back as early as 700 BC by the Babylonians, the Olmec and Maya civilizations used 0 as a separate number as early as the 1st century BC, but this usage did not spread beyond Mesoamerica. The use of a numeral 0 in modern times originated with the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta in 628, the first systematic study of numbers as abstractions is usually credited to the Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Archimedes. Some Greek mathematicians treated the number 1 differently than larger numbers, independent studies also occurred at around the same time in India, China, and Mesoamerica. In 19th century Europe, there was mathematical and philosophical discussion about the nature of the natural numbers. A school of Naturalism stated that the numbers were a direct consequence of the human psyche. Henri Poincaré was one of its advocates, as was Leopold Kronecker who summarized God made the integers, in opposition to the Naturalists, the constructivists saw a need to improve the logical rigor in the foundations of mathematics. In the 1860s, Hermann Grassmann suggested a recursive definition for natural numbers thus stating they were not really natural, later, two classes of such formal definitions were constructed, later, they were shown to be equivalent in most practical applications. The second class of definitions was introduced by Giuseppe Peano and is now called Peano arithmetic and it is based on an axiomatization of the properties of ordinal numbers, each natural number has a successor and every non-zero natural number has a unique predecessor. Peano arithmetic is equiconsistent with several systems of set theory
5.
Line segment
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In geometry, a line segment is a part of a line that is bounded by two distinct end points, and contains every point on the line between its endpoints. A closed line segment includes both endpoints, while a line segment excludes both endpoints, a half-open line segment includes exactly one of the endpoints. Examples of line include the sides of a triangle or square. More generally, when both of the end points are vertices of a polygon or polyhedron, the line segment is either an edge if they are adjacent vertices. When the end points both lie on a such as a circle, a line segment is called a chord. Sometimes one needs to distinguish between open and closed line segments, thus, the line segment can be expressed as a convex combination of the segments two end points. In geometry, it is defined that a point B is between two other points A and C, if the distance AB added to the distance BC is equal to the distance AC. Thus in R2 the line segment with endpoints A = and C = is the collection of points. A line segment is a connected, non-empty set, if V is a topological vector space, then a closed line segment is a closed set in V. However, an open line segment is an open set in V if and only if V is one-dimensional. More generally than above, the concept of a segment can be defined in an ordered geometry. A pair of segments can be any one of the following, intersecting, parallel, skew. The last possibility is a way that line segments differ from lines, in an axiomatic treatment of geometry, the notion of betweenness is either assumed to satisfy a certain number of axioms, or else be defined in terms of an isometry of a line. Segments play an important role in other theories, for example, a set is convex if the segment that joins any two points of the set is contained in the set. This is important because it transforms some of the analysis of sets to the analysis of a line segment. The Segment Addition Postulate can be used to add congruent segment or segments with equal lengths and consequently substitute other segments into another statement to make segments congruent. A line segment can be viewed as a case of an ellipse in which the semiminor axis goes to zero, the foci go to the endpoints. A complete orbit of this ellipse traverses the line segment twice, as a degenerate orbit this is a radial elliptic trajectory. In addition to appearing as the edges and diagonals of polygons and polyhedra, some very frequently considered segments in a triangle include the three altitudes, the three medians, the perpendicular bisectors of the sides, and the internal angle bisectors
6.
Prime number
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A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. A natural number greater than 1 that is not a number is called a composite number. For example,5 is prime because 1 and 5 are its only positive integer factors, the property of being prime is called primality. A simple but slow method of verifying the primality of a number n is known as trial division. It consists of testing whether n is a multiple of any integer between 2 and n, algorithms much more efficient than trial division have been devised to test the primality of large numbers. Particularly fast methods are available for numbers of forms, such as Mersenne numbers. As of January 2016, the largest known prime number has 22,338,618 decimal digits, there are infinitely many primes, as demonstrated by Euclid around 300 BC. There is no simple formula that separates prime numbers from composite numbers. However, the distribution of primes, that is to say, many questions regarding prime numbers remain open, such as Goldbachs conjecture, and the twin prime conjecture. Such questions spurred the development of branches of number theory. Prime numbers give rise to various generalizations in other domains, mainly algebra, such as prime elements. A natural number is called a number if it has exactly two positive divisors,1 and the number itself. Natural numbers greater than 1 that are not prime are called composite, among the numbers 1 to 6, the numbers 2,3, and 5 are the prime numbers, while 1,4, and 6 are not prime. 1 is excluded as a number, for reasons explained below. 2 is a number, since the only natural numbers dividing it are 1 and 2. Next,3 is prime, too,1 and 3 do divide 3 without remainder, however,4 is composite, since 2 is another number dividing 4 without remainder,4 =2 ·2. 5 is again prime, none of the numbers 2,3, next,6 is divisible by 2 or 3, since 6 =2 ·3. The image at the right illustrates that 12 is not prime,12 =3 ·4, no even number greater than 2 is prime because by definition, any such number n has at least three distinct divisors, namely 1,2, and n
7.
Set (mathematics)
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In mathematics, a set is a well-defined collection of distinct objects, considered as an object in its own right. For example, the numbers 2,4, and 6 are distinct objects when considered separately, Sets are one of the most fundamental concepts in mathematics. Developed at the end of the 19th century, set theory is now a part of mathematics. In mathematics education, elementary topics such as Venn diagrams are taught at a young age, the German word Menge, rendered as set in English, was coined by Bernard Bolzano in his work The Paradoxes of the Infinite. A set is a collection of distinct objects. The objects that make up a set can be anything, numbers, people, letters of the alphabet, other sets, Sets are conventionally denoted with capital letters. Sets A and B are equal if and only if they have precisely the same elements. Cantors definition turned out to be inadequate, instead, the notion of a set is taken as a notion in axiomatic set theory. There are two ways of describing, or specifying the members of, a set, one way is by intensional definition, using a rule or semantic description, A is the set whose members are the first four positive integers. B is the set of colors of the French flag, the second way is by extension – that is, listing each member of the set. An extensional definition is denoted by enclosing the list of members in curly brackets, one often has the choice of specifying a set either intensionally or extensionally. In the examples above, for instance, A = C and B = D, there are two important points to note about sets. First, in a definition, a set member can be listed two or more times, for example. However, per extensionality, two definitions of sets which differ only in one of the definitions lists set members multiple times, define, in fact. Hence, the set is identical to the set. The second important point is that the order in which the elements of a set are listed is irrelevant and we can illustrate these two important points with an example, = =. For sets with many elements, the enumeration of members can be abbreviated, for instance, the set of the first thousand positive integers may be specified extensionally as, where the ellipsis indicates that the list continues in the obvious way. Ellipses may also be used where sets have infinitely many members, thus the set of positive even numbers can be written as
8.
Element (mathematics)
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In mathematics, an element, or member, of a set is any one of the distinct objects that make up that set. Writing A = means that the elements of the set A are the numbers 1,2,3 and 4, sets of elements of A, for example, are subsets of A. For example, consider the set B =, the elements of B are not 1,2,3, and 4. Rather, there are three elements of B, namely the numbers 1 and 2, and the set. The elements of a set can be anything, for example, C =, is the set whose elements are the colors red, green and blue. The relation is an element of, also called set membership, is denoted by the symbol ∈, writing x ∈ A means that x is an element of A. Equivalent expressions are x is a member of A, x belongs to A, x is in A and x lies in A, another possible notation for the same relation is A ∋ x, meaning A contains x, though it is used less often. The negation of set membership is denoted by the symbol ∉, writing x ∉ A means that x is not an element of A. The symbol ϵ was first used by Giuseppe Peano 1889 in his work Arithmetices principia nova methodo exposita, here he wrote on page X, Signum ϵ significat est. Ita a ϵ b legitur a est quoddam b. which means The symbol ϵ means is, so a ϵ b is read as a is a b. The symbol itself is a stylized lowercase Greek letter epsilon, the first letter of the word ἐστί, the Unicode characters for these symbols are U+2208, U+220B and U+2209. The equivalent LaTeX commands are \in, \ni and \notin, mathematica has commands \ and \. The number of elements in a set is a property known as cardinality, informally. In the above examples the cardinality of the set A is 4, an infinite set is a set with an infinite number of elements, while a finite set is a set with a finite number of elements. The above examples are examples of finite sets, an example of an infinite set is the set of positive integers =. Using the sets defined above, namely A =, B = and C =,2 ∈ A ∈ B3,4 ∉ B is a member of B Yellow ∉ C The cardinality of D = is finite, the cardinality of P = is infinite. Halmos, Paul R. Naive Set Theory, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, NY, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 0-387-90092-6 - Naive means that it is not fully axiomatized, not that it is silly or easy. Jech, Thomas, Set Theory, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Suppes, Patrick, Axiomatic Set Theory, NY, Dover Publications, Inc
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Partially ordered set
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In mathematics, especially order theory, a partially ordered set formalizes and generalizes the intuitive concept of an ordering, sequencing, or arrangement of the elements of a set. A poset consists of a set together with a binary relation indicating that, for pairs of elements in the set. The word partial in the partial order or partially ordered set is used as an indication that not every pair of elements need be comparable. That is, there may be pairs of elements for which neither element precedes the other in the poset, Partial orders thus generalize total orders, in which every pair is comparable. To be an order, a binary relation must be reflexive, antisymmetric. One familiar example of an ordered set is a collection of people ordered by genealogical descendancy. Some pairs of people bear the descendant-ancestor relationship, but other pairs of people are incomparable, a poset can be visualized through its Hasse diagram, which depicts the ordering relation. A partial order is a binary relation ≤ over a set P satisfying particular axioms which are discussed below, when a ≤ b, we say that a is related to b. The axioms for a partial order state that the relation ≤ is reflexive, antisymmetric. That is, for all a, b, and c in P, it must satisfy, in other words, a partial order is an antisymmetric preorder. A set with an order is called a partially ordered set. The term ordered set is also used, as long as it is clear from the context that no other kind of order is meant. In particular, totally ordered sets can also be referred to as ordered sets, for a, b, elements of a partially ordered set P, if a ≤ b or b ≤ a, then a and b are comparable. In the figure on top-right, e. g. and are comparable, while and are not, a partial order under which every pair of elements is comparable is called a total order or linear order, a totally ordered set is also called a chain. A subset of a poset in which no two elements are comparable is called an antichain. A more concise definition will be given using the strict order corresponding to ≤. For example, is covered by in the figure. Standard examples of posets arising in mathematics include, The real numbers ordered by the standard less-than-or-equal relation ≤, the set of subsets of a given set ordered by inclusion
10.
Inequality (mathematics)
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In mathematics, an inequality is a relation that holds between two values when they are different. The notation a ≠ b means that a is not equal to b and it does not say that one is greater than the other, or even that they can be compared in size. If the values in question are elements of a set, such as the integers or the real numbers. The notation a < b means that a is less than b, the notation a > b means that a is greater than b. In either case, a is not equal to b and these relations are known as strict inequalities. The notation a < b may also be read as a is less than b. The notation a ≥ b means that a is greater than or equal to b, not less than can also be represented by the symbol for less than bisected by a vertical line, not. In engineering sciences, a formal use of the notation is to state that one quantity is much greater than another. The notation a ≪ b means that a is less than b. The notation a ≫ b means that a is greater than b. Inequalities are governed by the following properties, all of these properties also hold if all of the non-strict inequalities are replaced by their corresponding strict inequalities and monotonic functions are limited to strictly monotonic functions. The transitive property of inequality states, For any real numbers a, b, c, If a ≥ b and b ≥ c, If a ≤ b and b ≤ c, then a ≤ c. If either of the premises is an inequality, then the conclusion is a strict inequality. E. g. if a ≥ b and b > c, then a > c An equality is of course a special case of a non-strict inequality. E. g. if a = b and b > c, then a > c The relations ≤ and ≥ are each others converse, For any real numbers a and b, If a ≤ b, then b ≥ a. If a ≥ b, then a + c ≥ b + c, If a ≤ b and c >0, then ac ≤ bc and a/c ≤ b/c. If c is negative, then multiplying or dividing by c inverts the inequality, If a ≥ b and c <0, then ac ≤ bc, If a ≤ b and c <0, then ac ≥ bc and a/c ≥ b/c. More generally, this applies for a field, see below
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Rational number
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In mathematics, a rational number is any number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction p/q of two integers, a numerator p and a non-zero denominator q. Since q may be equal to 1, every integer is a rational number, the decimal expansion of a rational number always either terminates after a finite number of digits or begins to repeat the same finite sequence of digits over and over. Moreover, any repeating or terminating decimal represents a rational number and these statements hold true not just for base 10, but also for any other integer base. A real number that is not rational is called irrational, irrational numbers include √2, π, e, and φ. The decimal expansion of an irrational number continues without repeating, since the set of rational numbers is countable, and the set of real numbers is uncountable, almost all real numbers are irrational. Rational numbers can be defined as equivalence classes of pairs of integers such that q ≠0, for the equivalence relation defined by ~ if. The rational numbers together with addition and multiplication form field which contains the integers and is contained in any field containing the integers, finite extensions of Q are called algebraic number fields, and the algebraic closure of Q is the field of algebraic numbers. In mathematical analysis, the numbers form a dense subset of the real numbers. The real numbers can be constructed from the numbers by completion, using Cauchy sequences, Dedekind cuts. The term rational in reference to the set Q refers to the fact that a number represents a ratio of two integers. In mathematics, rational is often used as a noun abbreviating rational number, the adjective rational sometimes means that the coefficients are rational numbers. However, a curve is not a curve defined over the rationals. Any integer n can be expressed as the rational number n/1, a b = c d if and only if a d = b c. Where both denominators are positive, a b < c d if and only if a d < b c. If either denominator is negative, the fractions must first be converted into equivalent forms with positive denominators, through the equations, − a − b = a b, two fractions are added as follows, a b + c d = a d + b c b d. A b − c d = a d − b c b d, the rule for multiplication is, a b ⋅ c d = a c b d. Where c ≠0, a b ÷ c d = a d b c, note that division is equivalent to multiplying by the reciprocal of the divisor fraction, a d b c = a b × d c. Additive and multiplicative inverses exist in the numbers, − = − a b = a − b and −1 = b a if a ≠0
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