Explore: Ordered

In mathematics, an ordered pair, denoted (a, b), is a pair of objects in which their order is significant. The ordered pair (a, b) is different from the ordered pair (b, a), unless a = b. In contrast, the unordered pair, denoted {a, b}, always equals the unordered pair {b, a}. Ordered pairs are also called 2-tuples, or sequences (sometimes, lists in a computer science context) of length 2. Ordered pairs of scalars are sometimes called 2-dimensional vectors. (Technically, this is an abuse of terminology since an ordered pair need not be an element of a vector space.) The entries of an ordered pair can be other ordered pairs, enabling the recursive definition of ordered n-tuples (ordered lists of n objects). For example, the ordered triple (a,b,c) can be defined as (a, (b,c)), i.e., as one pair nested in another. In the ordered pair (a, b), the object a is called the first entry, and the object b the second entry of the pair. Alternatively, the objects are called the first and second components, the first and second coordinates, or the left and right projections of the ordered pair. Cartesian products and binary relations (and hence functions) are defined in terms of ordered pairs, cf. picture.

In mathematics, especially order theory, a partial order on a set is an arrangement such that, for certain pairs of elements, one precedes the other. The word partial is used to indicate that not every pair of elements needs to be comparable; that is, there may be pairs for which neither element precedes the other. Partial orders thus generalize total orders, in which every pair is comparable. Formally, a partial order is a homogeneous binary relation that is reflexive, antisymmetric, and transitive. A partially ordered set (poset for short) is an ordered pair P = ( X , ≤ ) {\displaystyle P=(X,\leq )} consisting of a set X {\displaystyle X} (called the ground set of P {\displaystyle P} ) and a partial order ≤ {\displaystyle \leq } on X {\displaystyle X} . When the meaning is clear from context and there is no ambiguity about the partial order, the set X {\displaystyle X} itself is sometimes called a poset.