Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
If a poset has a greatest element, it must be the unique maximal element, but otherwise there can be more than one maximal element, and similarly for least elements and minimal elements. In our running example, {,,} and {} are the maximal and minimal elements. Removing these, there are 3 maximal elements and 3 minimal elements (see Fig. 5).
The reason is that, in general, there are many different possible ways to draw a Hasse diagram for a given poset. The simple technique of just starting with the minimal elements of an order and then drawing greater elements incrementally often produces quite poor results: symmetries and internal structure of the order are easily lost.
A complete lattice is a lattice in which every subset of elements of L has an infimum and supremum; this generalizes the analogous properties of the real numbers. An order-embedding is a function that maps distinct elements of S to distinct elements of L such that each pair of elements in S has the same ordering in L as they do in S.
The parallel composition of P and Q, written P || Q, [7] P + Q, [2] or P ⊕ Q, [1] is defined similarly, from the disjoint union of the elements in P and the elements in Q, with pairs of elements that both belong to P or both to Q having the same order as they do in P or Q respectively. In P || Q, a pair x, y is incomparable whenever x belongs ...
An antichain in is a subset of in which each pair of different elements is incomparable; that is, there is no order relation between any two different elements in . (However, some authors use the term "antichain" to mean strong antichain , a subset such that there is no element of the poset smaller than two distinct elements of the antichain.)
Let n be a positive integer, and let P be the partial order on the elements a i and b i (for 1 ≤ i ≤ n) in which a i ≤ b j whenever i ≠ j, but no other pairs are comparable. In particular, a i and b i are incomparable in P; P can be viewed as an oriented form of a crown graph. The illustration shows an ordering of this type for n = 4.
Now there are also elements of a poset that are special with respect to some subset of the order. This leads to the definition of upper bounds. Given a subset S of some poset P, an upper bound of S is an element b of P that is above all elements of S. Formally, this means that s ≤ b, for all s in S. Lower bounds again are defined by inverting ...
The family of all subsets of an n-element set (its power set) can be partially ordered by set inclusion; in this partial order, two distinct elements are said to be incomparable when neither of them contains the other. The width of a partial order is the largest number of elements in an antichain, a set of pairwise incomparable elements ...