inequality

An inequality is a statement of one of the forms: a ≠ b, ab or a≥b, where a and b are suitably comparable expressions. Inequalities involving are called ‘strict', and those involving≤and≥are termed ‘weak'.

Given an inequality involving one real variable x, the problem may be to find the solutions, that is, the values of x that satisfy the inequality, in an explicit form. Often, the set of solutions, known as the solution set, may be given as an interval or as a union of intervals. For example, the solution set of the inequality

is the set (−4, −3) ⋃ (3, ∞).

(Some authors use ‘inequation' for a statement which holds only for some values of the variables involved. For them, an inequation has a solution set but an inequality does not; an inequality is comparable to an identity such as x2 + 2 > 2x which holds for all real x)

• solution
• solution of triangles
• solution set
• solvable by radicals
• solvable group
• sorting algorithms
• source
• source
• source
• space
• space-filling curve
• space–time
• span
• spanning set
• spanning tree
• sparse matrix
• Spearman's rank correlation coefficient
• special function
• special linear group
• special relativity
• spectral theorem
• spectrum
• speed
• speed of light
• sphere