Binary relation

In mathematics, a binary relation on a set A is a collection of ordered pairs of elements of A. In other words, it is a subset of the Cartesian product A2 = A × A. More generally, a binary relation between two sets A and B is a subset of A × B. The terms dyadic relation and 2-place relation are synonyms for binary relations.

An example is the "divides" relation between the set of prime numbers P and the set of integers Z, in which every prime p is associated with every integer z that is a multiple of p (and not with any integer that is not a multiple of p). In this relation, for instance, the prime 2 is associated with numbers that include −4, 0, 6, 10, but not 1 or 9; and the prime 3 is associated with numbers that include 0, 6, and 9, but not 4 or 13.

Binary relations are used in many branches of mathematics to model concepts like "is greater than", "is equal to", and "divides" in arithmetic, "is congruent to" in geometry, "is adjacent to" in graph theory, "is orthogonal to" in linear algebra and many more. The concept of function is defined as a special kind of binary relation. Binary relations are also heavily used in computer science.

A binary relation is the special case n = 2 of an n-ary relation R ⊆ A1 × … × An, that is, a set of n-tuples where the jth component of each n-tuple is taken from the jth domain Aj of the relation.

In some systems of axiomatic set theory, relations are extended to classes, which are generalizations of sets. This extension is needed for, among other things, modeling the concepts of "is an element of" or "is a subset of" in set theory, without running into logical inconsistencies such as Russell's paradox.

Contents

Formal definition

A binary relation R is usually defined as an ordered triple (X, Y, G) where X and Y are arbitrary sets (or classes), and G is a subset of the Cartesian product X × Y. The sets X and Y are called the domain (or the set of departure) and codomain (or the set of destination), respectively, of the relation, and G is called its graph.

The statement (x,y) ∈ R is read "x is R-related to y", and is denoted by xRy or R(x,y). The latter notation corresponds to viewing R as the characteristic function on "X" x "Y" for the set of pairs of G.

The order of the elements in each pair of G is important: if ab, then aRb and bRa can be true or false, independently of each other.

Is a relation more than its graph?

According to the definition above, two relations with the same graph may be different, if they differ in the sets X and Y. For example, if G = \{(1,2),(1,3),(2,7)\}, then (\mathbb{Z},\mathbb{Z}, G), (\mathbb{R}, \mathbb{N}, G), and (\mathbb{N}, \mathbb{R}, G) are three distinct relations.

Some mathematicians do not consider the sets X and Y to be part of the relation, and therefore define a binary relation as being a subset of X x Y, that is, just the graph G. According to this view, the set of pairs \{(1,2),(1,3),(2,7)\} is a relation from any set that contains \{1,2\} to any set that contains \{2,3,7\}.

A special case of this difference in points of view applies to the notion of function. Many authors insist on distinguishing between a function's codomain and its range. Thus, a single "rule," like mapping every real number x to x2, can lead to distinct functions f: \mathbb{R} \rightarrow \mathbb{R} and f: \mathbb{R} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^%2B, depending on whether the images under that rule are understood to be reals or, more restrictively, non-negative reals. But others view functions as simply sets of ordered pairs with unique first components. This difference in perspectives does raise some nontrivial issues. As an example, the former camp considers surjectivity—or being onto—as a property of functions, while the latter sees it as a relationship that functions may bear to sets.

Either approach is adequate for most uses, provided that one attends to the necessary changes in language, notation, and the definitions of concepts like restrictions, composition, inverse relation, and so on. The choice between the two definitions usually matters only in very formal contexts, like category theory.

Example

Example: Suppose there are four objects {ball, car, doll, gun} and four persons {John, Mary, Ian, Venus}. Suppose that John owns the ball, Mary owns the doll, and Venus owns the car. Nobody owns the gun and Ian owns nothing. Then the binary relation "is owned by" is given as

R=({ball, car, doll, gun}, {John, Mary, Ian, Venus}, {(ball, John), (doll, Mary), (car, Venus)}).

Thus the first element of R is the set of objects, the second is the set of people, and the last element is a set of ordered pairs of the form (object, owner).

The pair (ball, John), denoted by ballRJohn means that the ball is owned by John.

Two different relations could have the same graph. For example: the relation

({ball, car, doll, gun}, {John, Mary, Venus}, {(ball,John), (doll, Mary), (car, Venus)})

is different from the previous one as everyone is an owner. But the graphs of the two relations are the same.

Nevertheless, R is usually identified or even defined as G(R) and "an ordered pair (x, y) ∈ G(R)" is usually denoted as "(x, y) ∈ R".

Special types of binary relations

Some important classes of binary relations R between X and Y are listed below.

Uniqueness properties:

Totality properties:

Uniqueness and totality properties:

Relations over a set

If X = Y then we simply say that the binary relation is over X, or that it is an endorelation over X. Some classes of endorelations are widely studied in graph theory, where they're known as directed graphs.

The set of all binary relations B(X) on a set X is a semigroup with involution with the involution being the mapping of a relation to its inverse relation.

Some important classes of binary relations over a set X are:

A relation that is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive is called an equivalence relation. A relation that is reflexive, antisymmetric, and transitive is called a partial order. A partial order that is total is called a total order, simple order, linear order, or a chain.[3] A linear order where every nonempty set has a least element is called a well-order. A relation that is symmetric, transitive, and serial is also reflexive.

Operations on binary relations

If R is a binary relation over X and Y, then the following is a binary relation over Y and X:

If R is a binary relation over X, then each of the following is a binary relation over X:

If R, S are binary relations over X and Y, then each of the following is a binary relation:

If R is a binary relation over X and Y, and S is a binary relation over Y and Z, then the following is a binary relation over X and Z: (see main article composition of relations)

Complement

If R is a binary relation over X and Y, then the following too:

The complement of the inverse is the inverse of the complement.

If X = Y the complement has the following properties:

The complement of the inverse has these same properties.

Restriction

The restriction of a binary relation on a set X to a subset S is the set of all pairs (x, y) in the relation for which x and y are in S.

If a relation is reflexive, irreflexive, symmetric, antisymmetric, asymmetric, transitive, total, trichotomous, a partial order, total order, strict weak order, total preorder (weak order), or an equivalence relation, its restrictions are too.

However, the transitive closure of a restriction is a subset of the restriction of the transitive closure, i.e., in general not equal.

Also, the various concepts of completeness (not to be confused with being "total") do not carry over to restrictions. For example, on the set of real numbers a property of the relation "≤" is that every non-empty subset S of R with an upper bound in R has a least upper bound (also called supremum) in R. However, for a set of rational numbers this supremum is not necessarily rational, so the same property does not hold on the restriction of the relation "≤" to the set of rational numbers.

The left-restriction (right-restriction, respectively) of a binary relation between X and Y to a subset S of its domain (codomain) is the set of all pairs (x, y) in the relation for which x (y) is an element of S.

Sets versus classes

Certain mathematical "relations", such as "equal to", "member of", and "subset of", cannot be understood to be binary relations as defined above, because their domains and codomains cannot be taken to be sets in the usual systems of axiomatic set theory.

For example, if we try to model the general concept of "equality" as a binary relation =, we must take the domain and codomain to be the "set of all sets", which is not a set in the usual set theory. The usual work-around to this problem is to select a "large enough" set A, that contains all the objects of interest, and work with the restriction =A instead of =.

Similarly, the "subset of" relation ⊆ needs to be restricted to have domain and codomain P(A) (the power set of a specific set A): the resulting set relation can be denoted ⊆A. Also, the "member of" relation needs to be restricted to have domain A and codomain P(A) to obtain a binary relation ∈A that is a set.

Another solution to this problem is to use a set theory with proper classes, such as NBG or Morse–Kelley set theory, and allow the domain and codomain (and so the graph) to be proper classes: in such a theory, equality, membership, and subset are binary relations without special comment. (A minor modification needs to be made to the concept of the ordered triple (X, Y, G), as normally a proper class cannot be a member of an ordered tuple; or of course one can identify the function with its graph in this context.)

In most mathematical contexts, references to the relations of equality, membership and subset are harmless because they can be understood implicitly to be restricted to some set in the context.

The number of binary relations

The number of distinct binary relations on an n-element set is 2n2 (sequence A002416 in OEIS):

Number of n-element binary relations of different types
n all transitive reflexive preorder partial order total preorder total order equivalence relation
0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 16 13 4 4 3 3 2 2
3 512 171 64 29 19 13 6 5
4 65536 3994 4096 355 219 75 24 15
OEIS A002416 A006905 A053763 A000798 A001035 A000670 A000142 A000110

Notes:

The binary relations can be grouped into pairs (relation, complement), except that for n = 0 the relation is its own complement. The non-symmetric ones can be grouped into quadruples (relation, complement, inverse, inverse complement).

Examples of common binary relations

Binary relations by property
reflexive symmetric transitive symbol example
directed graph
undirected graph No Yes
tournament No No pecking order
dependency Yes Yes
weak order Yes
preorder Yes Yes preference
partial order Yes No Yes subset
partial equivalence Yes Yes
equivalence relation Yes Yes Yes ∼, ≅, ≈, ≡ equality
strict partial order No No Yes < proper subset

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Klip, Knauer and Mikhalev: p. 3
  2. ^ Yao, Y.Y.; Wong, S.K.M. (1995). "Generalization of rough sets using relationships between attribute values". Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Joint Conference on Information Sciences: 30–33. http://www2.cs.uregina.ca/~yyao/PAPERS/relation.pdf. .
  3. ^ Joseph G. Rosenstein, Linear orderings, Academic Press, 1982, ISBN 012597680, p. 4

References