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Arithmetic and number systems

403 articles

E (mathematical constant)

e, also known as Euler's number or Napier's constant, is the base of the natural logarithm, an irrational and transcendental number approximately equal to 2.71828, named for Leonhard Euler.

Easton's theorem

Easton's theorem is a result in set theory, proved by William Easton, stating that the continuum function at regular cardinals is constrained only by monotonicity and König's theorem.

Eldon Hansen

Eldon Hansen, full name Eldon Robert Hansen, is an American mathematician born in 1927, coauthor of Global Optimization Using Interval Analysis and namesake of interval methods.

Epsilon number

An epsilon number is a transfinite ordinal that is a fixed point of omega exponentiation, satisfying ω^α = α, with ε₀ the first and best known.

Equals sign

The equals sign, also called the equality sign, is a mathematical symbol stating that two expressions have the same value, introduced by Robert Recorde in 1557.

Equiconsistency

Equiconsistency is a relation between formal theories in which each is consistent if and only if the other is; it underlies the consistency strength hierarchy comparing theories like ZFC.

Erdős cardinal

An Erdős cardinal is a large cardinal defined by a partition property, named for Paul Erdős; the most-used case is κ(ω₁), and a Ramsey cardinal is the κ-Erdős cardinal.

Euclidean division

Euclidean division, also called division with remainder, is the theorem that dividing one integer by a nonzero integer yields a unique quotient and remainder smaller than the divisor.

Euler's identity

Euler's identity, also written e^iπ = −1, is the mathematical statement that e to the power i times pi equals negative 1, connecting five fundamental constants.

Exponentiation

Exponentiation is the arithmetic operation that raises a base to an exponent, written as a superscript; for positive integer exponents it means repeated multiplication, extending to zero, negative, rational, real, and complex exponents.

Extended precision

Extended precision is an IEEE 754 floating-point format exceeding its associated basic format in precision and range, in practice usually Intel's x87 80-bit format with 64 significant bits.

Extendible cardinal

An extendible cardinal is a cardinal κ in set theory such that every rank segment starting at κ can be elementarily copied into a higher one.

Fast inverse square root

Fast inverse square root, also called Fast InvSqrt, is an algorithm that estimates 1/√x by treating a float's bits as an integer, famous from the 1999 game Quake III Arena.

Fermat number

A Fermat number is an integer of the form 2^(2^n) + 1, named after Pierre de Fermat. Only the first five, 3 through 65537, are known to be prime.

Fibonacci sequence

The Fibonacci sequence, also known as the Fibonacci series, is the integer sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, in which each term is the sum of the two before it.

Fields Medal

The Fields Medal (Fields Prize) is a mathematics prize awarded every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians, first awarded in 1936 and limited to mathematicians under 40.

Fixed-point arithmetic

Fixed-point arithmetic is a method of computing with real numbers by representing each value as an integer scaled by a fixed factor, with the radix point implicit.

Floor and ceiling functions

The floor and ceiling functions, also called the greatest integer function, round a real number down or up to an integer, with notation introduced by Kenneth Iverson in 1962.

Fraction

A fraction is a number written a over b, representing a parts of a whole divided into b equal parts, with a the numerator and b the denominator.

Fundamental theorem of algebra

The fundamental theorem of algebra, also called D'Alembert's theorem, states that every nonconstant polynomial with complex coefficients has at least one complex root; a degree n polynomial has exactly n.

Fused multiply-add

A fused multiply-add (FMA) is a floating-point operation that computes a × b + c with a single rounding, added to IEEE 754 in 2008.

Fuzzy arithmetic

Fuzzy arithmetic is the extension of arithmetic operations from real numbers to fuzzy numbers, used to calculate with non-probabilistic uncertainty such as expert judgment or linguistic scales.

Fuzzy number

A fuzzy number is a fuzzy set on the real line representing an imprecise quantity such as "about 5", formulated by Didier Dubois and Henri Prade in 1978.

Gelfond's constant

Gelfond's constant is the transcendental number e^π, approximately 23.1407, proven transcendental in 1934 by Aleksandr Gelfond and independently by Theodor Schneider in 1935, settling Hilbert's seventh problem.

Generalizations of Fibonacci numbers

Generalizations of Fibonacci numbers, including the k-bonacci or k-step Fibonacci numbers, are integer sequences that extend the Fibonacci recurrence by summing more preceding terms, giving tribonacci and tetranacci numbers.

Generalized continuum hypothesis

The generalized continuum hypothesis (GCH) is the set-theoretic statement that each infinite cardinal's power set has the next larger cardinality; Gödel and Cohen proved it independent of ZFC.

Generalized mean

The generalized mean, also called the power mean or Hölder mean, is a family of averaging functions parameterized by an exponent, including the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic means.

Geometric progression

A geometric progression, also called a geometric sequence, is a sequence of numbers where each term is the previous term multiplied by a fixed common ratio.

Gimel function

The gimel function, named after the Hebrew letter gimel, maps each infinite cardinal κ to κ^cf(κ), where cf(κ) is κ's cofinality, and determines cardinal exponentiation.

Glaisher's theorem

Glaisher's theorem is an 1883 result stating that partitions into parts not divisible by d equal partitions with no part repeated d or more times.