Mathematics Glossary

Browse 8 mathematics terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

8 Mathematics Terms

Category: In category theory (and its application to typed functional programming), a mathematical structure consisting of objects and morphisms (arrows) between them,...
Category Theory: A branch of mathematics that studies structures and the relationships between them at a highly abstract level, using concepts such as objects, morphisms,...
Cryptography: The field of designing and analyzing methods for secure communication, authentication, integrity, and related protections using mathematical techniques. Modern...
Idempotent: An operation that produces the same result whether executed once or multiple times. Critical in distributed systems where network failures mean you might...
Proof by Induction: A proof technique that establishes a statement for all natural numbers by proving a base case and then showing that if the statement holds for n, it must hold...
Recurrence Relation: Recurrence Relation is a mathematical equation that defines a sequence of values where each term is expressed as a function of one or more preceding terms. In...
Scalar: A single, indivisible value as opposed to a compound data structure like an array, object, or tuple. In databases, scalar types include integers, floats,...
Set: An unordered collection of unique elements supporting O(1) average-time membership testing, insertion, and deletion, along with mathematical operations like...