List of types of functions

Functions can be identified according to the properties they have. These properties describe the functions' behaviour under certain conditions. A parabola is a specific type of function.

Relative to set theory

These properties concern the domain, the codomain and the image of functions.

Relative to an operator (c.q. a group or other structure)

These properties concern how the function is affected by arithmetic operations on its operand.

The following are special examples of a homomorphism on a binary operation:

Relative to negation:

  • Even function: is symmetric with respect to the Y-axis. Formally, for each x: f(x) = f(x).
  • Odd function: is symmetric with respect to the origin. Formally, for each x: f(x) = f(x).

Relative to a binary operation and an order:

Relative to a topology

Relative to topology and order:

Relative to an ordering

Relative to the real/complex numbers

Relative to measurability

Relative to measure

Relative to measure and topology

Ways of defining functions/relation to type theory

In general, functions are often defined by specifying the name of a dependent variable, and a way of calculating what it should map to. For this purpose, the symbol or Church's is often used. Also, sometimes mathematicians notate a function's domain and codomain by writing e.g. . These notions extend directly to lambda calculus and type theory, respectively.

Higher order functions

These are functions that operate on functions or produce other functions, see Higher order function. Examples are:

Relation to category theory

Category theory is a branch of mathematics that formalizes the notion of a special function via arrows or morphisms. A category is an algebraic object that (abstractly) consists of a class of objects, and for every pair of objects, a set of morphisms. A partial (equiv. dependently typed) binary operation called composition is provided on morphisms, every object has one special morphism from it to itself called the identity on that object, and composition and identities are required to obey certain relations.

In a so-called concrete category, the objects are associated with mathematical structures like sets, magmas, groups, rings, topological spaces, vector spaces, metric spaces, partial orders, differentiable manifolds, uniform spaces, etc., and morphisms between two objects are associated with structure-preserving functions between them. In the examples above, these would be functions, magma homomorphisms, group homomorphisms, ring homomorphisms, continuous functions, linear transformations (or matrices), metric maps, monotonic functions, differentiable functions, and uniformly continuous functions, respectively.

As an algebraic theory, one of the advantages of category theory is to enable one to prove many general results with a minimum of assumptions. Many common notions from mathematics (e.g. surjective, injective, free object, basis, finite representation, isomorphism) are definable purely in category theoretic terms (cf. monomorphism, epimorphism).

Category theory has been suggested as a foundation for mathematics on par with set theory and type theory (cf. topos).

Allegory theory[1] provides a generalization comparable to category theory for relations instead of functions.

More general objects still called functions

See also

References

  1. Peter Freyd, Andre Scedrov (1990). Categories, Allegories. Mathematical Library Vol 39. North-Holland. ISBN 978-0-444-70368-2.
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