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Determinacy is a subfield of set theory, a branch of mathematics, that examines the conditions under which one or the other player of a game has a winning strategy, and the consequences of the existence of such strategies. Alternatively and similarly, "determinacy" is the property of a game whereby such a strategy exists.
The language of mathematics has a wide vocabulary of specialist and technical terms. It also has a certain amount of jargon: commonly used phrases which are part of the culture of mathematics, rather than of the subject.
Mathematics is a broad subject that is commonly divided in many areas or branches that may be defined by their objects of study, by the used methods, or by both. For example, analytic number theory is a subarea of number theory devoted to the use of methods of analysis for the study of natural numbers. This glossary is alphabetically sorted.
S is α-effective if the members of S have strategies s.t. no matter what the complement of S does, the outcome will be a. S is β-effective if for any strategies of the complement of S, the members of S can answer with strategies that ensure outcome a. Finite game is a game with finitely many players, each of which has a finite set of strategies.
For example: Mathematics is the classification and study of all possible patterns. [14] Walter Warwick Sawyer, 1955. Yet another approach makes abstraction the defining criterion: Mathematics is a broad-ranging field of study in which the properties and interactions of idealized objects are examined. [15]
An example is the function that relates each real number x to its square x 2. The output of a function f corresponding to an input x is denoted by f(x) (read "f of x"). In this example, if the input is −3, then the output is 9, and we may write f(−3) = 9. The input variable(s) are sometimes referred to as the argument(s) of the function.
The grid method can be introduced by thinking about how to add up the number of points in a regular array, for example the number of squares of chocolate in a chocolate bar. As the size of the calculation becomes larger, it becomes easier to start counting in tens; and to represent the calculation as a box which can be sub-divided, rather than ...
A great many professional mathematicians take no interest in a definition of mathematics, or consider it undefinable. There is not even consensus on whether mathematics is an art or a science. Some just say, "mathematics is what mathematicians do". [166] [167] A common approach is to define mathematics by its object of study. [168] [169] [170 ...