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Lecture

Functions: Introduction and Terminology

In course

CS-101: Advanced information, computation, communication I

Discrete mathematics is a discipline with applications to almost all areas of study. It provides a set of indispensable tools to computer science in particular. This course reviews (familiar) topics as diverse as mathematical reasoning, combinatorics, disc ...

Description

This lecture introduces the concept of functions as an assignment of elements from one set to another, covering terminology such as domain, codomain, image, preimage, and range. It explains how functions can be represented and explores the properties of injections, surjections, and bijections.

Instructor

Karl Aberer

Karl Aberer received his PhD in mathematics in 1991 from the ETH Zürich. From 1991 to 1992 he was postdoctoral fellow at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he joined the Integrated Publication and Information Systems institute (IPSI) of GMD in Germany, where he was leading the research division Open Adaptive Information Management Systems. In 2000 he joined EPFL as full professor. Since 2005 he is the director of the Swiss National Research Center for Mobile Information and Communication Systems ( NCCR-MICS, www.mics.ch ). He is member of the editorial boards of VLDB Journal, ACM Transaction on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems and World Wide Web Journal. He has been consulting for the Swiss government in research and science policy as a member of the Swiss Research and Technology Council ( SWTR ) from 2003 - 2011.

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Bijection, injection and surjection

In mathematics, injections, surjections, and bijections are classes of functions distinguished by the manner in which arguments (input expressions from the domain) and (output expressions from the codomain) are related or mapped to each other. A function maps elements from its domain to elements in its codomain. Given a function : The function is injective, or one-to-one, if each element of the codomain is mapped to by at most one element of the domain, or equivalently, if distinct elements of the domain map to distinct elements in the codomain.

Surjective function

In mathematics, a surjective function (also known as surjection, or onto function ˈɒn.tuː) is a function f such that every element y can be mapped from some element x such that f(x) = y. In other words, every element of the function's codomain is the of one element of its domain. It is not required that x be unique; the function f may map one or more elements of X to the same element of Y.

Theta function

In mathematics, theta functions are special functions of several complex variables. They show up in many topics, including Abelian varieties, moduli spaces, quadratic forms, and solitons. As Grassmann algebras, they appear in quantum field theory. The most common form of theta function is that occurring in the theory of elliptic functions. With respect to one of the complex variables (conventionally called z), a theta function has a property expressing its behavior with respect to the addition of a period of the associated elliptic functions, making it a quasiperiodic function.

Image (mathematics)

In mathematics, the image of a function is the set of all output values it may produce. More generally, evaluating a given function at each element of a given subset of its domain produces a set, called the "image of under (or through) ". Similarly, the inverse image (or preimage) of a given subset of the codomain of is the set of all elements of the domain that map to the members of Image and inverse image may also be defined for general binary relations, not just functions. The word "image" is used in three related ways.

Jacobi elliptic functions

In mathematics, the Jacobi elliptic functions are a set of basic elliptic functions. They are found in the description of the motion of a pendulum (see also pendulum (mathematics)), as well as in the design of electronic elliptic filters. While trigonometric functions are defined with reference to a circle, the Jacobi elliptic functions are a generalization which refer to other conic sections, the ellipse in particular. The relation to trigonometric functions is contained in the notation, for example, by the matching notation for .

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