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As defined in set theory, the maximum and minimum of a set are the greatest and least elements in the set, respectively. Unbounded infinite sets, such as the set of real numbers, have no minimum or maximum. In statistics, the corresponding concept is the sample maximum and minimum.
The maximum of a subset of a preordered set is an element of which is greater than or equal to any other element of , and the minimum of is again defined dually. In the particular case of a partially ordered set , while there can be at most one maximum and at most one minimum there may be multiple maximal or minimal elements.
However, the general definitions remain valid in the more abstract setting of order theory where arbitrary partially ordered sets are considered. The concepts of infimum and supremum are close to minimum and maximum, but are more useful in analysis because they better characterize special sets which may have no minimum or maximum.
The extreme value theorem was originally proven by Bernard Bolzano in the 1830s in a work Function Theory but the work remained unpublished until 1930. Bolzano's proof consisted of showing that a continuous function on a closed interval was bounded, and then showing that the function attained a maximum and a minimum value.
In a totally ordered set the maximal element and the greatest element coincide; and it is also called maximum; in the case of function values it is also called the absolute maximum, to avoid confusion with a local maximum. [1] The dual terms are minimum and absolute minimum. Together they are called the absolute extrema. Similar conclusions ...
Perhaps the best-known example of the idea of locality lies in the concept of local minimum (or local maximum), which is a point in a function whose functional value is the smallest (resp., largest) within an immediate neighborhood of points. [1]
In mathematics, a smooth maximum of an indexed family x 1, ..., x n of numbers is a smooth approximation to the maximum function (, …,), meaning a parametric family of functions (, …,) such that for every α, the function is smooth, and the family converges to the maximum function as .
Every nonempty closed subset of X has a maximum and a minimum element. An ordered space satisfying (any one of) these conditions is called a complete lattice. In addition, the following are equivalent for all ordered spaces (X, <), and (assuming countable choice) are true whenever (X, <) is compact.