Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
A set with a partial order on it is called a partially ordered set, poset, or just ordered set if the intended meaning is clear. By checking these properties, one immediately sees that the well-known orders on natural numbers , integers , rational numbers and reals are all orders in the above sense.
If the preordered set (,) also happens to be a partially ordered set (or more generally, if the restriction (,) is a partially ordered set) then is a maximal element of if and only if contains no element strictly greater than ; explicitly, this means that there does not exist any element such that and .
In the mathematical field of order theory, an element a of a partially ordered set with least element 0 is an atom if 0 < a and there is no x such that 0 < x < a.. Equivalently, one may define an atom to be an element that is minimal among the non-zero elements, or alternatively an element that covers the least element 0.
A set equipped with a total order is a totally ordered set; [5] the terms simply ordered set, [2] linearly ordered set, [3] [5] toset [6] and loset [7] [8] are also used. The term chain is sometimes defined as a synonym of totally ordered set , [ 5 ] but generally refers to a totally ordered subset of a given partially ordered set.
Consequently, partially ordered sets for which certain infima are known to exist become especially interesting. For instance, a lattice is a partially ordered set in which all nonempty finite subsets have both a supremum and an infimum, and a complete lattice is a partially ordered set in which all subsets
Hasse diagram of the natural numbers, partially ordered by "x≤y if x divides y".The numbers 4 and 6 are incomparable, since neither divides the other. In mathematics, two elements x and y of a set P are said to be comparable with respect to a binary relation ≤ if at least one of x ≤ y or y ≤ x is true.
Dilworth's theorem for infinite partially ordered sets states that a partially ordered set has finite width w if and only if it may be partitioned into w chains. For, suppose that an infinite partial order P has width w , meaning that there are at most a finite number w of elements in any antichain.