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A partially ordered set (poset for short) is an ordered pair = (,) consisting of a set (called the ground set of ) and a partial order on . When the meaning is clear from context and there is no ambiguity about the partial order, the set X {\displaystyle X} itself is sometimes called a poset.
An antichain in a partially ordered set is a set of elements no two of which are comparable to each other, and a chain is a set of elements every two of which are comparable. A chain decomposition is a partition of the elements of the order into disjoint chains. Dilworth's theorem states that, in any finite partially ordered set, the largest ...
A totally ordered set is a partially ordered set in which any two elements are comparable. The Szpilrajn extension theorem states that every partial order is contained in a total order. Intuitively, the theorem says that any method of comparing elements that leaves some pairs incomparable can be extended in such a way that every pair becomes ...
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.)
In a partially ordered set there may be some elements that play a special role. The most basic example is given by the least element of a poset. For example, 1 is the least element of the positive integers and the empty set is the least set under the subset order. Formally, an element m is a least element if: m ≤ a, for all elements a of the ...
Download as PDF; Printable version ... and z are incomparable elements of a finite poset, ... (1984), "A correlational inequality for linear extensions of a poset ...
Formally, let P = (S, ≤) be a partially ordered set. Then a critical pair is an ordered pair (x, y) of elements of S with the following three properties: x and y are incomparable in P, for every z in S, if z < x then z < y, and; for every z in S, if y < z then x < z.
A semiorder, defined from a utility function as above, is a partially ordered set with the following two properties: [3]. Whenever two disjoint pairs of elements are comparable, for instance as < and <, there must be an additional comparison among these elements, because () would imply < while () would imply <.