Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In mathematics, the term undefined refers to a value, function, or other expression that cannot be assigned a meaning within a specific formal system. [ 1 ] Attempting to assign or use an undefined value within a particular formal system, may produce contradictory or meaningless results within that system.
They understand the role of undefined terms, definitions, axioms and theorems in Euclidean geometry. However, students at this level believe that axioms and definitions are fixed, rather than arbitrary, so they cannot yet conceive of non-Euclidean geometry. Geometric ideas are still understood as objects in the Euclidean plane. Level 4.
In Euclidean geometry, similarity is used to describe objects that have the same shape, while congruence is used to describe objects that are the same in both size and shape. [69] Hilbert, in his work on creating a more rigorous foundation for geometry, treated congruence as an undefined term whose properties are defined by axioms.
For example: "All humans are mortal, and Socrates is a human. ∴ Socrates is mortal." ∵ Abbreviation of "because" or "since". Placed between two assertions, it means that the first one is implied by the second one. For example: "11 is prime ∵ it has no positive integer factors other than itself and one." ∋ 1. Abbreviation of "such that".
Alfred Tarski explained the role of primitive notions as follows: [2]. When we set out to construct a given discipline, we distinguish, first of all, a certain small group of expressions of this discipline that seem to us to be immediately understandable; the expressions in this group we call PRIMITIVE TERMS or UNDEFINED TERMS, and we employ them without explaining their meanings.
The Elements begins with plane geometry, still taught in secondary school (high school) as the first axiomatic system and the first examples of mathematical proofs. It goes on to the solid geometry of three dimensions. Much of the Elements states results of what are now called algebra and number theory, explained in geometrical language. [1]
It starts with undefined terms and axioms, propositions concerning the undefined terms which are assumed to be self-evidently true (from Greek axios 'something worthy'). From this basis, the method proves theorems using deductive logic. Euclid's Elements was read by anyone who was considered educated in the West until the middle of the 20th ...
In the context of proofs, this phrase is often seen in induction arguments when passing from the base case to the induction step, and similarly, in the definition of sequences whose first few terms are exhibited as examples of the formula giving every term of the sequence. necessary and sufficient