Bijection in the context of "Cantor's diagonal argument"

In physics, an observable is a physical property or physical quantity that can be measured. In classical mechanics, an observable is a real-valued "function" on the set of all possible system states, e.g., position and momentum. In quantum mechanics, an observable is an operator, or gauge, where the property of the quantum state can be determined by some sequence of operations. For example, these operations might involve submitting the system to various electromagnetic fields and eventually reading a value.

Physically meaningful observables must also satisfy transformation laws that relate observations performed by different observers in different frames of reference. These transformation laws are automorphisms of the state space, that is bijective transformations that preserve certain mathematical properties of the space in question.

Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a one-to-one correspondence (bijection) with natural numbers), rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuous functions). Objects studied in discrete mathematics include integers, graphs, and statements in logic. By contrast, discrete mathematics excludes topics in "continuous mathematics" such as real numbers, calculus or Euclidean geometry. Discrete objects can often be enumerated by integers; more formally, discrete mathematics has been characterized as the branch of mathematics dealing with countable sets (finite sets or sets with the same cardinality as the natural numbers). However, there is no exact definition of the term "discrete mathematics".

The set of objects studied in discrete mathematics can be finite or infinite. The term finite mathematics is sometimes applied to parts of the field of discrete mathematics that deal with finite sets, particularly those areas relevant to business.

In set theory, Cantor's paradox states that there is no set of all cardinalities. This is derived from the theorem that there is no greatest cardinal number. In informal terms, the paradox is that the collection of all possible "infinite sizes" is not only infinite, but so infinitely large that its own infinite size cannot be any of the infinite sizes in the collection. The difficulty is handled in axiomatic set theory by declaring that this collection is not a set but a proper class; in von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory it follows from this and the axiom of limitation of size that this proper class must be in bijection with the class of all sets. Thus, not only are there infinitely many infinities, but this infinity is larger than any of the infinities it enumerates.

This paradox is named for Georg Cantor, who is often credited with first identifying it in 1899 (or between 1895 and 1897). Like a number of "paradoxes" it is not actually contradictory but merely indicative of a mistaken intuition, in this case about the nature of infinity and the notion of a set. Put another way, it is paradoxical within the confines of naïve set theory and therefore demonstrates that a careless axiomatization of this theory is inconsistent.

Nihon-shiki (Japanese: 日本式ローマ字, Hepburn: Nihon-shiki rōmaji; lit. 'Japan-style Roman letters') is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, it is the most regular one and has an almost one-to-one relation to the kana writing system. Its name is rendered Nihonsiki in the system itself.

In mathematics, particularly in combinatorics, given a family of sets, here called a collection C, a transversal (also called a cross-section) is a set containing exactly one element from each member of the collection. When the sets of the collection are mutually disjoint, each element of the transversal corresponds to exactly one member of C (the set it is a member of). If the original sets are not disjoint, there are two possibilities for the definition of a transversal:

• One variation is that there is a bijection f from the transversal to C such that x is an element of f(x) for each x in the transversal. In this case, the transversal is also called a system of distinct representatives (SDR).
• The other, less commonly used, does not require a one-to-one relation between the elements of the transversal and the sets of C. In this situation, the members of the system of representatives are not necessarily distinct.

In computer science, computing transversals is useful in several application domains, with the input family of sets often being described as a hypergraph.

In projective geometry, a homography is an isomorphism of projective spaces, induced by an isomorphism of the vector spaces from which the projective spaces derive. It is a bijection that maps lines to lines, and thus a collineation. In general, some collineations are not homographies, but the fundamental theorem of projective geometry asserts that is not so in the case of real projective spaces of dimension at least two. Synonyms include projectivity, projective transformation, and projective collineation.

Historically, homographies (and projective spaces) have been introduced to study perspective and projections in Euclidean geometry, and the term homography, which, etymologically, roughly means "similar drawing", dates from this time. At the end of the 19th century, formal definitions of projective spaces were introduced, which extended Euclidean and affine spaces by the addition of new points called points at infinity. The term "projective transformation" originated in these abstract constructions. These constructions divide into two classes that have been shown to be equivalent. A projective space may be constructed as the set of the lines of a vector space over a given field (the above definition is based on this version); this construction facilitates the definition of projective coordinates and allows using the tools of linear algebra for the study of homographies. The alternative approach consists in defining the projective space through a set of axioms, which do not involve explicitly any field (incidence geometry, see also synthetic geometry); in this context, collineations are easier to define than homographies, and homographies are defined as specific collineations, thus called "projective collineations".

In mathematics, a geometric transformation is any bijection of a set to itself (or to another such set) with some salient geometrical underpinning, such as preserving distances, angles, or ratios (scale). More specifically, it is a function whose domain and range are sets of points – most often a real coordinate space, ${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{2}}$ or ${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{3}}$ – such that the function is bijective so that its inverse exists. The study of geometry may be approached by the study of these transformations, such as in transformation geometry.

In graph theory, a lattice graph, mesh graph, or grid graph is a graph whose drawing, embedded in some Euclidean space ⁠${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}}$⁠, forms a regular tiling. This implies that the group of bijective transformations that send the graph to itself is a lattice in the group-theoretical sense.

Typically, no clear distinction is made between such a graph in the more abstract sense of graph theory, and its drawing in space (often the plane or 3D space). This type of graph may more shortly be called just a lattice, mesh, or grid. Moreover, these terms are also commonly used for a finite section of the infinite graph, as in "an 8 × 8 square grid".

In mathematics, the n-dimensional complex coordinate space (or complex n-space) is the set of all ordered n-tuples of complex numbers, also known as complex vectors. The space is denoted ${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{n}}$, and is the n-fold Cartesian product of the complex line ${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} }$ with itself. Symbolically,$${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{n}=\left\{(z_{1},\dots ,z_{n})\mid z_{i}\in \mathbb {C} \right\}}$$or$${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{n}=\underbrace {\mathbb {C} \times \mathbb {C} \times \cdots \times \mathbb {C} } _{n}.}$$The variables ${\displaystyle z_{i}}$ are the (complex) coordinates on the complex n-space. The special case ${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{2}}$, called the complex coordinate plane, is not to be confused with the complex plane, a graphical representation of the complex line.

Complex coordinate space is a vector space over the complex numbers, with componentwise addition and scalar multiplication. The real and imaginary parts of the coordinates set up a bijection of ${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{n}}$ with the 2n-dimensional real coordinate space, ${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{2n}}$. With the standard Euclidean topology, ${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{n}}$ is a topological vector space over the complex numbers.

In mathematics, an isometry (or congruence, or congruent transformation) is a distance-preserving transformation between metric spaces, usually assumed to be bijective. The word isometry is derived from the Ancient Greek: ἴσος isos meaning "equal", and μέτρον metron meaning "measure". If the transformation is from a metric space to itself, it is a kind of geometric transformation known as a motion.

In mathematics, the inverse function of a function f (also called the inverse of f) is a function that undoes the operation of f. The inverse of f exists if and only if f is bijective, and if it exists, is denoted by ${\displaystyle f^{-1}.}$

For a function ${\displaystyle f\colon X\to Y}$, its inverse ${\displaystyle f^{-1}\colon Y\to X}$ admits an explicit description: it sends each element ${\displaystyle y\in Y}$ to the unique element ${\displaystyle x\in X}$ such that f(x) = y.

In mathematics, an action of a group ${\displaystyle G}$ on a set ${\displaystyle S}$ is, loosely speaking, an operation that takes an element of ${\displaystyle G}$ and an element of ${\displaystyle S}$ and produces another element of ${\displaystyle S.}$ More formally, it is a group homomorphism from ${\displaystyle G}$ to the automorphism group of X (the set of all bijections on ${\displaystyle X}$ along with group operation being function composition). One says that ${\displaystyle G}$ acts on ${\displaystyle S.}$

Many sets of transformations form a group under function composition; for example, the rotations around a point in the plane. It is often useful to consider the group as an abstract group, and to say that one has a group action of the abstract group that consists of performing the transformations of the group of transformations. The reason for distinguishing the group from the transformations is that, generally, a group of transformations of a structure acts also on various related structures; for example, the above rotation group also acts on triangles by transforming triangles into triangles.

In projective geometry, a collineation is a one-to-one and onto map (a bijection) from one projective space to another, or from a projective space to itself, such that the images of collinear points are themselves collinear. A collineation is thus an isomorphism between projective spaces, or an automorphism from a projective space to itself. Some authors restrict the definition of collineation to the case where it is an automorphism. The set of all collineations of a space to itself form a group, called the collineation group.

The Rubik's Cube group ${\displaystyle (G,\cdot )}$ represents the mathematical structure of the Rubik's Cube mechanical puzzle. Each element of the set ${\displaystyle G}$ corresponds to a cube move, which is the effect of any sequence of rotations of the cube's faces. With this representation, not only can any cube move be represented, but any position of the cube as well, by detailing the cube moves required to rotate the solved cube into that position. Indeed with the solved position as a starting point, there is a one-to-one correspondence between each of the legal positions of the Rubik's Cube and the elements of ${\displaystyle G}$. The group operation ${\displaystyle \cdot }$ is the composition of cube moves, corresponding to the result of performing one cube move after another.

The Rubik's Cube is constructed by labeling each of the 48 non-center facets with the integers 1 to 48. Each configuration of the cube can be represented as a permutation of the labels 1 to 48, depending on the position of each facet. Using this representation, the solved cube is the identity permutation which leaves the cube unchanged, while the twelve cube moves that rotate a layer of the cube 90 degrees are represented by their respective permutations. The Rubik's Cube group is the subgroup of the symmetric group ${\displaystyle S_{48}}$ generated by the six permutations corresponding to the six clockwise cube moves. With this construction, any configuration of the cube reachable through a sequence of cube moves is within the group. Its operation ${\displaystyle \cdot }$ refers to the composition of two permutations; within the cube, this refers to combining two sequences of cube moves together, doing one after the other. The Rubik's Cube group is non-abelian as composition of cube moves is not commutative; doing a sequence of cube moves in a different order can result in a different configuration.

In mathematics, a stereographic projection is a perspective projection of the sphere, through a specific point on the sphere (the pole or center of projection), onto a plane (the projection plane) perpendicular to the diameter through the point. It is a smooth, bijective function from the entire sphere except the center of projection to the entire plane. It maps circles on the sphere to circles or lines on the plane, and is conformal, meaning that it preserves angles at which curves meet and thus locally approximately preserves shapes. It is neither isometric (distance preserving) nor equiareal (area preserving).

The stereographic projection gives a way to represent a sphere by a plane. The metric induced by the inverse stereographic projection from the plane to the sphere defines a geodesic distance between points in the plane equal to the spherical distance between the spherical points they represent. A two-dimensional coordinate system on the stereographic plane is an alternative setting for spherical analytic geometry instead of spherical polar coordinates or three-dimensional cartesian coordinates. This is the spherical analog of the Poincaré disk model of the hyperbolic plane.

In abstract algebra, the symmetric group defined over any set is the group whose elements are all the bijections from the set to itself, and whose group operation is the composition of functions. In particular, the finite symmetric group ${\displaystyle \mathrm {S} _{n}}$ defined over a finite set of ${\displaystyle n}$ symbols consists of the permutations that can be performed on the ${\displaystyle n}$ symbols. Since there are ${\displaystyle n!}$ (${\displaystyle n}$ factorial) such permutation operations, the order (number of elements) of the symmetric group ${\displaystyle \mathrm {S} _{n}}$ is ${\displaystyle n!}$.

Although symmetric groups can be defined on infinite sets, this article focuses on the finite symmetric groups: their applications, their elements, their conjugacy classes, a finite presentation, their subgroups, their automorphism groups, and their representation theory. For the remainder of this article, "symmetric group" will mean a symmetric group on a finite set.