| Abstract from DBPedia | In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called elements, or terms). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in a sequence, and unlike a set, the order does matter. Formally, a sequence can be defined as a function from natural numbers (the positions of elements in the sequence) to the elements at each position. The notion of a sequence can be generalized to an indexed family, defined as a function from an arbitrary index set. For example, (M, A, R, Y) is a sequence of letters with the letter 'M' first and 'Y' last. This sequence differs from (A, R, M, Y). Also, the sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8), which contains the number 1 at two different positions, is a valid sequence. Sequences can be finite, as in these examples, or infinite, such as the sequence of all even positive integers (2, 4, 6, ...). The position of an element in a sequence is its rank or index; it is the natural number for which the element is the image. The first element has index 0 or 1, depending on the context or a specific convention. In mathematical analysis, a sequence is often denoted by letters in the form of , and , where the subscript n refers to the nth element of the sequence; for example, the nth element of the Fibonacci sequence is generally denoted as . In computing and computer science, finite sequences are sometimes called strings, words or lists, the different names commonly corresponding to different ways to represent them in computer memory; infinite sequences are called streams. The empty sequence is included in most notions of sequence, but may be excluded depending on the context.数学において列（れつ、英: sequence）とは、対象あるいは事象からなる集まりを「順序だてて並べる」ことで、例えば「Ａ，Ｂ，Ｃ」は３つのものからなる列である。狭義にはこの例のように一列に並べるものを列と呼ぶが、広義にはそうでない場合（すなわち半順序に並べる場合）も列という場合がある（例：有向点列）。集合との違いは順番が決まっている事で、順番を変更したものは別の列であるとみなされる。たとえば列「Ａ，Ｂ，Ｃ」と列「Ｂ，Ｃ，Ａ」は異なる列である。 数を並べた列を数列、（何らかの空間上の）点を並べた列を点列、文字を並べた列を文字列（あるいは語）という。このように同種の性質○○を満たすもののみを並べた場合にはその列を「○○列」という言い方をするが、異なる種類のものを並べた列も許容されている。 列の構成要素は、列の要素あるいは項（こう、term）と呼ばれ、例えば「Ａ，Ｂ，Ｃ」には３つの項がある。項の個数をその列の項数あるいは長さ (length, size) という。項数が有限である列を有限列（ゆうげんれつ、finite sequence）と、そうでないものを無限列（むげんれつ、infinite sequence）と呼ぶ。（例えば正の偶数全体の成す列 (2, 4, 6, ...) ）。 (Source: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Sequence) |
