Inequalities
Inequalities
Basic model
We now introduce the concept of inequality. In the most basic form, an inequality is the definition of an order between the numbers (or elements of our set), that gives some structure to the elements in relation to each other.
Let's be a bit less abstract and give the most basic example:
This means that the number 3 is "less than" the number 5. In our unary notation with "xs" or "s(s(s(...." it would simply indicate the number with the most amount of "s" or "x". As the definition feels a bit circular, as it requires the sense of the word "most", we can give a more difficult but less dependent on previous definitions.
It means that if we were to count up starting from the number "a", we would reach "b" only after counting up times. If "b" and "a" are not known, we only know that we'll reach someday "b" starting from "a" and counting up (therefore is also unknown).
In the previous example this means that we take our "3" and count up, sure that one day we'll reach "5". This happens exactly after counting up "5-3" times.
Adding and removing a value from both sides of the inequality does not change its value. Instead, multiplying can change the truth value of the inequality when the value we multiply by is negative. As an example:
But if we were to count up from "-3", we would reach instead "-2","-1","0",... without ever reaching "-5". Therefore the order inverts when multiplying by negative.
The symbol is the same as the symbol, except with its arguments inverted. There exist also the "or equal variants", where means "less or equal", while means "greater or equal". These allows inequalities to set "less strict" boundaries, rather than being strictly superior.
With variables
Introducing "x" into the mix, we can now have expressions as
where the true "logical form" would be expressed as
So we separate the two symbols, into two inequalities, and can treat each separately. By the way, this also was the case for equality, as
is simply a conjunction (logical and) with the following written form