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Concept
Well-defined expression
Summary
In mathematics, a well-defined expression or unambiguous expression is an expression whose definition assigns it a unique interpretation or value. Otherwise, the expression is said to be not well defined, ill defined or ambiguous. A function is well defined if it gives the same result when the representation of the input is changed without changing the value of the input. For instance, if takes real numbers as input, and if does not equal then is not well defined (and thus not a function). The term well defined can also be used to indicate that a logical expression is unambiguous or uncontradictory.
A function that is not well defined is not the same as a function that is undefined. For example, if , then even though is undefined does not mean that the function is not well defined – but simply that 0 is not in the domain of .
Let be sets, let and "define" as if and if .
Then is well defined if . For example, if and , then would be well defined and equal to .
However, if , then would not be well defined because is "ambiguous" for . For example, if and , then would have to be both 0 and 1, which makes it ambiguous. As a result, the latter is not well defined and thus not a function.
In order to avoid the quotation marks around "define" in the previous simple example, the "definition" of could be broken down into two simple logical steps:
While the definition in step 1 is formulated with the freedom of any definition and is certainly effective (without the need to classify it as "well defined"), the assertion in step 2 has to be proved. That is, is a function if and only if , in which case – as a function – is well defined.
On the other hand, if , then for an , we would have that and , which makes the binary relation not functional (as defined in Binary relation#Special types of binary relations) and thus not well defined as a function. Colloquially, the "function" is also called ambiguous at point (although there is per definitionem never an "ambiguous function"), and the original "definition" is pointless.
Official source
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