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There are several different notations used to represent different kinds of inequalities: 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. These relations are known as strict inequalities, [1] meaning that a is strictly less than or strictly greater than b ...
Many, if not most, undecidable problems in mathematics can be posed as word problems: determining when two distinct strings of symbols (encoding some mathematical concept or object) represent the same object or not. For undecidability in axiomatic mathematics, see List of statements undecidable in ZFC.
This is not possible here, as there is no natural order on symbols, and many symbols are used in different parts of mathematics with different meanings, often completely unrelated. Therefore, some arbitrary choices had to be made, which are summarized below. The article is split into sections that are sorted by an increasing level of technicality.
If, for some notion of substructure, objects are substructures of themselves (that is, the relationship is reflexive), then the qualification proper requires the objects to be different. For example, a proper subset of a set S is a subset of S that is different from S, and a proper divisor of a number n is a divisor of n that is different from n.
For example, in mathematics, "or" means "one, the other or both", while, in common language, it is either ambiguous or means "one or the other but not both" (in mathematics, the latter is called "exclusive or"). Finally, many mathematical terms are common words that are used with a completely different meaning. [100]
In mathematics, certain kinds of mistaken proof are often exhibited, and sometimes collected, as illustrations of a concept called mathematical fallacy.There is a distinction between a simple mistake and a mathematical fallacy in a proof, in that a mistake in a proof leads to an invalid proof while in the best-known examples of mathematical fallacies there is some element of concealment or ...
For example, the imaginary number is undefined within the set of real numbers. So it is meaningless to reason about the value, solely within the discourse of real numbers. However, defining the imaginary number i {\displaystyle i} to be equal to − 1 {\displaystyle {\sqrt {-1}}} , allows there to be a consistent set of mathematics referred to ...
In mathematics, equivalent definitions are used in two somewhat different ways. First, within a particular mathematical theory (for example, Euclidean geometry ), a notion (for example, ellipse or minimal surface ) may have more than one definition.