Talk:Arity

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[edit] What's up with the list of adjectives?

The list of adjectives "unary", "binary", "ternary", ... is informative but it should link to the wiktionary, not the wikipedia. I'll do that asap. Having "denary" point to Decimal is rather confusing...

Perhaps the wiktionary is the best home for the full list? PhS 12:01, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Um, it's been a few weeks... I think I'll shift it around myself. Melchoir 23:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rarity of higher arities

Actually, it's arities above 2 that are rare. Further, the alleged reason seems invalid to me. The fact that one could formally represent any n-ary operation with n > 2 as the composition of binary operations by using a cute trick is quite separate from the fact that we relatively rarely have a use for such operations in mathematics. I've removed most of this statement but I preserve it here in case anyone can find a good justification, or some use for it:

Arities greater than 4 are seldom encountered in mathematics and computer science. This fact has a mathematical justification. Burris and Sankappanavar (1981: Ex. IV.7.8) attribute to Sierpinski a theorem to the effect that any finitary operation on a finite set can be expressed as the composition of binary operations.

Zaslav 07:55, 25 June 2006 (UTC), Zaslav 18:31, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Average Joe and Math symbols

Would it be possible to edit this page with a few examples. I'm not against complex greek and roman math symbols, but most of the people I know glaze over when they see any complicated numbers.

Also, perhaps more context examples would be useful...