# Questions tagged [terminology]

questions about definitions, terms, and common names in theoretical computer science.

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### Is there a notion of “sequential” idempotence?

TL;DR: I have a definition, and I'm wondering if it already has a name or has been studied. Suppose we have a sequence of operations (or if we want to be mathematical, functions whose domains and ...
1k views

### Are there any intersections between Theory A and Theory B?

In the following two questions Origins and applications of Theory A vs Theory B? and Solid applications of category theory in TCS?, many people shared their knowledge and opinions about the division ...
153 views

### What is the etiquette of naming concepts after people?

There is a concept introduced by other researchers that I use in my work, and IMO it is appropriate to rename it to honor the inventors. Is it considered normal to just go ahead and name it like that ...
121 views

### What is the name of this algorithm on direct acyclic graph?

I am trying to linearize the history of a git branch for display purpose. I want commits to be collocated by branch instead of simply displaying commits in the order given by the time of commit. In ...
227 views

### Terminology about computation and Finite algebra

I am looking for the name of something that may have one. A finite algebra $\mathcal{A} = (E, \{f_1, f_2, \ldots, f_k\})$ is a non-empty set $E$ together with some functions $f_i$ from $E^{r_i} \to E$...
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### Constraint terminology

If we want to pick a solution $S$ from a collection of items $C$ to maximize some function $f(S)$. The constraint that we pick at most $k$ item, i.e., $|S| \leq k$, is called the cardinality ...
155 views

### A class of functions on a lattice that are easy to optimize

Let $({\cal P}(X),\subseteq)$ be the subset lattice for a finite set $X$. Consider a function $f:{\cal P}(X)\to \mathbb{R}$ with the following property: Given any element $I_0\in {\cal P}(X)$, there ...
132 views

### Maximize number of edges covered by an independent set of vertices

Smallest vertex cover which is also an independent set asks about finding an independent set that covers all edges. This problem is known as the independent vertex cover problem and is equivalent to ...
103 views

### Quick Sampling from Probability Distribution: Is there a name for this algorithm?

I'm trying to quickly sample from a near-uniform discrete probability distribution exactly once without calculating the entire CDF. Here's the algorithm. Givens: $N,$ the number of elements to ...
372 views

### On partitioning a collection into equivalence classes

Suppose I have a collection $A$ that I want to partition into equivalence classes, according to some equivalence predicate $E$. The naive algorithm for doing this is essentially recursive. It ...
1k views

### Is it a Known Concept to Compute an Algorithm Once and Re-Interpret Answer for Different Inputs

I recently came across a strange concept and was wondering if this was a known / named concept in the realm of CS. The concept is that you evaluate some computation or logical circuit that takes in N ...
120 views

### Complexity of a particular determinant

Suppose we have an $n\times n$ matrix $A$ with non-negative integer entries such that $\mathsf{Tr}(A^i)=0$ at every $i\in\{1,2,\dots,n-2,n-1\}$ and $\mathsf{Tr}(A^n)\neq0$, then from Trace-Determinant ...
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### Constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) vs. satisfiability modulo theory (SMT); with a coda on constraint programming

Does someone dare to attempt to clarify what's the relation of these fields of study or perhaps even give a more concrete answer at the level of problems? Like which includes which assuming some ...
1k views

### What's “pseudo time” when used in comparison with semaphores

I'm currently listening to Alan Kays' talk "Is it really complex or did we just make it complicated ?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY&= ) where he says that "semaphores were a bad ...
235 views

### What does “modulo” mean in SMT? [closed]

Very simple question, for which I failed to find an explanation: what does "modulo" mean in the "Satisfiability Modulo Theories"?
544 views

### Graph isomorphism with equivalence relation on the vertex set

A colored graph can be described as tuple $(G,c)$ where $G$ is a graph and $c : V(G) \rightarrow \mathbb{N}$ is the coloring. Two colored graphs $(G,c)$ and $(H,d)$ are said to be isomorphic if there ...
164 views

### Can complexities differ w.r.t. different computational models?

I understand that a decision problem can be decidable with respect to certain computational models. For instance, the question whether an arbitrary sequence of parenthesis is balanced is undecidable ...
618 views

### Is it right to call $2^{\sqrt{n}}$ “exponential”?

In his answer to a previous question, Sadeq Dousti recalled the following terminology: $f(n) = n^{\omega(1)}$ is called super-polynomial. (e.g. $n^{\log n}, 2^n, 2^{2^n}$.) $f(n) = 2^{n^{\Theta(1)}}$ ...
815 views

### Terminology for f(g(x)) = g(f(x))

There is a paper by Ritt from 1923 that calls the relation, $f(g(x)) = g(f(x))$, permutable functions. Is there a more recent terminology used in the literature, or is this still the standard?
251 views

### Terminology for complete k-partite graph where k is not fixed

Is there a better term for "complete k-partite graph" in the case where k is not fixed? If I say "complete k-partite graph", people tend to assume "for some particular k". In other words, what's a ...
284 views

### Is there a name for this property of a binary relation?

Consider a binary relation $\mathsf{R}$ such that $x\mathsf{R}y$ is the case only if there is some $z$ such that both $x\mathsf{R}z$ and $y\mathsf{R}z$ are the case. (EDIT: note that this may be ...
1k views

### Why is lambda calculus a “calculus”?

The only definition of "calculus" I'm aware of is the study of limits, derivatives, integrals, etc. in analysis. In what sense is lambda calculus (or things like mu calculus) a "calculus"? How does it ...
111 views

### How to say “select the largest” when there can be more than one [closed]

Many algorithms include a step such as "select the largest number from a given numeric array", or "select the leftmost point from a given set of points", etc. In many cases, it is possible that the ...
365 views

### Complexity of blind sort?

We all know that the minimal complexity of a comparison-based sorting algorithm is $\Omega(n \log n)$ comparisons. I'm trying to do a blind sort, i.e. given a number $n$ output a circuit (with boolean,...
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### Is there a name for this property in set-valued analysis or combinatorics?

I asked this question a few days ago on MO, but I haven't received an answer. So I thought I would ask here. I have also added a relaxed version of the question here. Let $F$ be a set-valued, finite-...
571 views

### $O(m+n)$ really necessary for graph algorithms?

It is standard to express the running time of linear-time graph algorithms as $O(m+n)$ (such as depth-first-search, etc.). For nearly all such algorithms, vertices of degree zero have no effect on ...
689 views

### Name this list-of-lists data structure

Is there a canonical name for the following data structure for list of lists? Suppose we have got a list of length $Z$ of finite lists $[a_0,\dots,a_n], [b_0,\dots,b_m], [c_0,\dots,c_o], \dots$ of ...
171 views

### Term for a “rooted” directional graph?

Consider an acyclic directed graph in which a traversal from any node in the graph must eventually end at some terminal node R. Borrowing from tree-based vocabulary, I would tend call this the "root" ...
290 views

### Is there a name for a hashtable with a tree for each bin instead of a list?

It is well-known that the worst case performance for a chaining hashtable, is O(n), where n is the number of objects in the table. The normal assumption is that the hash is either uniform, or secure, ...
621 views

### what is “one-to-one reduction from a function f to another function g”

I am reading a paper called "Rational Proof". It mentioned the following one-to-one reduction. I cannot google an introduction of it. An excerpt from the paper. "Recall that a one-to-one reduction ...
367 views

### Difference between Stencil -structures and Cellular Automata Category-theoretically?

Definitions Stencil = "For a given point, a stencil is a pre-determined set of nearest neighbors (possibly including itself)." (source) Wikipedia's definition (source) = It looks ...
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### Labels for terms in the lambda calculus

In the lambda calculus, are there commonly accepted names for $x$ and $M$ when they appear in $\lambda x [M]$ ? Something along the lines of "binder" and "bindee"?
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### (concise?) definition of thread safety

Wikipedia has the following definition: Thread safety is a computer programming concept applicable in the context of multi-threaded programs. A piece of code is thread-safe if it only ...
201 views

### Minimal sum of matrix elements

Here's my attempt to explain the problem in mathematical language: $$\text{Given square matrix A}$$  \left( \begin{array}{cccc} a_{1,1} & a_{1,2} & \cdots & a_{1,N} \\ a_{2,1} ...
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### All recursive algorithms are inherently NOT-inplace, isn't it?

As recursive algorithms depend on the stack whose size is in almost all the cases depend on input, why don't we consider all the recursive algorithms as NOT-inplace algorithms? Consider for example, ...
825 views

### What do people mean by capabilities and capacities?

Someone made a casual remark to me about the terminology of capabilities and capacities, in the context of threads, processors and runtime systems, particularly their theoretical modelling. For ...
3k views

### What does 'gadget' mean in NP-hard reduction?

This question may not be technical. As a non-native speaker and a TA for algorithm class, I always wondered what gadget means in 'clause gadget' or 'variable gadget'. The dictionary says a gadget is a ...
If we're given a boolean function $f : \{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$, we can define its sensitivity as follows. The sensitivity $s(f, w)$ with respect to input $w$ is the number of ways of flipping a ...