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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.
All completeness properties are described along a similar scheme: one describes a certain class of subsets of a partially ordered set that are required to have a supremum or required to have an infimum. Hence every completeness property has its dual, obtained by inverting the order-dependent definitions in the given statement. Some of the ...
In mathematics, the least-upper-bound property (sometimes called completeness, supremum property or l.u.b. property) [1] is a fundamental property of the real numbers. More generally, a partially ordered set X has the least-upper-bound property if every non-empty subset of X with an upper bound has a least upper bound (supremum) in X .
Then f preserves the supremum of S if the set f(S) = {f(x) | x in S} has a least upper bound in Q which is equal to f(s), i.e. f(sup S) = sup f(S) This definition consists of two requirements: the supremum of the set f(S) exists and it is equal to f(s). This corresponds to the abovementioned parallel to category theory, but is not always ...
The supremum of this function (largest value) is 5, and the infimum (smallest value) is −4. However, the function takes these values only on the sets {} and {}, respectively, which are of measure zero. Everywhere else, the function takes the value 2.
An example is given by the power set of a set, partially ordered by inclusion, for which the supremum is the union and the infimum is the intersection. Another example is given by the natural numbers, partially ordered by divisibility, for which the supremum is the least common multiple and the infimum is the greatest common divisor.
The supremum of finite sets is given by the least common multiple and the infimum by the greatest common divisor. For infinite sets, the supremum will always be 0 while the infimum can well be greater than 1. For example, the set of all even numbers has 2 as the greatest common divisor.
Roughly speaking, these functions map the supremum/infimum of a set to the supremum/infimum of the image of the set. Depending on the type of sets for which a function satisfies this property, it may preserve finite, directed, non-empty, or just arbitrary suprema or infima.