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In mathematics, a relation denotes some kind of relationship between two objects in a set, which may or may not hold. [1] As an example, " is less than " is a relation on the set of natural numbers ; it holds, for instance, between the values 1 and 3 (denoted as 1 < 3 ), and likewise between 3 and 4 (denoted as 3 < 4 ), but not between the ...
When it is desired to associate a numeric value with the result of a comparison between two data items, say a and b, the usual convention is to assign −1 if a < b, 0 if a = b and 1 if a > b. For example, the C function strcmp performs a three-way comparison and returns −1, 0, or 1 according to this convention, and qsort expects the ...
An example of a binary relation is the "divides" relation over the set of prime numbers and the set of integers, in which each prime is related to each integer that is a multiple of , but not to an integer that is not a multiple of .
This article lists mathematical properties and laws of sets, involving the set-theoretic operations of union, intersection, and complementation and the relations of set equality and set inclusion. It also provides systematic procedures for evaluating expressions, and performing calculations, involving these operations and relations.
If X and Y are finite sets, then there exists a bijection between the two sets X and Y if and only if X and Y have the same number of elements. Indeed, in axiomatic set theory , this is taken as the definition of "same number of elements" ( equinumerosity ), and generalising this definition to infinite sets leads to the concept of cardinal ...
For example, the natural numbers with their standard order. A chain is a subset of a poset that is a totally ordered set. For example, {{}, {}, {,,}} is a chain. An antichain is a subset of a poset in which no two distinct elements are comparable.
Fibonacci numbers are used in a polyphase version of the merge sort algorithm in which an unsorted list is divided into two lists whose lengths correspond to sequential Fibonacci numbers—by dividing the list so that the two parts have lengths in the approximate proportion φ.
For the case n = 2, an extension of the Euclidean algorithm can find any integer relation that exists between any two real numbers x 1 and x 2.The algorithm generates successive terms of the continued fraction expansion of x 1 /x 2; if there is an integer relation between the numbers, then their ratio is rational and the algorithm eventually terminates.