operation
According to the dictionary Webster’s 1913, which can be accessed through\\htmladdnormallinkHyperDictionary.comhttp://www.hyperdictionary.com/, mathematicalmeaning of the word operation is: “some transformation
to bemade upon quantities”. Thus, operation is similar
to mapping or function. The mostgeneral mathematical definition of operation can be made as follows:
Definition 1
Operation defined on the sets with values in is a mapping from Cartesian product to , i.e.
Result of operation is usually denoted by one of the following notation:
- •
- •
- •
The following examples show variety of the concept operation used in mathematics.
Examples
- 1.
Arithmetic operations: addition
(http://planetmath.org/Addition), subtraction
, multiplication (http://planetmath.org/Multiplication), division.Their generalization
leads to the so-called binary operations
, which is a basic conceptfor such algebraic structures
as groups and rings.
- 2.
Operations on vectors in the plane ().
- –
Multiplication by a scalar. Generalization leads to vector spaces
.
- –
Scalar product
. Generalization leads to Hilbert spaces.
- –
- 3.
Operations on vectors in the space ().
- –
Cross product
. Can be generalized for the vector space of arbitraryfinite dimension
, see vector product in general vector spaces.
- –
Triple product.
- –
- 4.
Some operations on functions.
- –
Composition.
- –
Function inverse
.
- –
In the case when some of the sets are equal to the values set , it is usually saidthat operation is defined just on . For such operations, it could be interestingto consider their action on some subset . In particular,if operation on elements from always gives an element from , it is said that is closed under this operation. Formally it is expressed in the following definition.
Definition 2
Let operation is definedon , i.e. there exists and indexes such that . For simplicity, let us assume that .A subset is said to be closed under operation iffor all from U and for all holds:
The next examples illustrates this definition.
Examples
- 1.
Vector space over a field is a set, on which the following two operationsare defined:
- –
multiplication by a scalar:
- –
addition
Of course these operations need to satisfy some properties (for details see the entry vector space).A subset , which is closed under these operations, is called vector subspace.
- –
- 2.
Consider collection
of all subsets of the real numbers , which we denote by .On this collection, binary operation intersection of sets is defined:
Collection of sets :
is closed under this operation.
Title | operation |
Canonical name | Operation |
Date of creation | 2013-03-22 14:57:23 |
Last modified on | 2013-03-22 14:57:23 |
Owner | rspuzio (6075) |
Last modified by | rspuzio (6075) |
Numerical id | 10 |
Author | rspuzio (6075) |
Entry type | Definition |
Classification | msc 03E20 |
Related topic | Function |
Related topic | Mapping |
Related topic | Transformation |
Related topic | BinaryOperation |
Defines | closed under |
Defines | arithmetic operation |