Fundamentally, a function is a relationship (mapping) between the values of some set
A function can map a set to itself. For example,
The set you are mapping from is called the domain.
The set that is being mapped to is called the codomain.
The range is the subset of the codomain which the function actually maps to (a function doesn't necessarily map to every value in the codomain. But where it does, the range equals the codomain).
Functions which map to
Functions which map to
An identity function maps something to itself:
That is, for every
Say we have a function
We say
The inverse of a function is unique, that is, it is surjective and injective (described below), that is, there is a unique
A surjective function, also called "onto", is a function
This is equivalent to:
An injective function, also called "one-to-one", is a function
That is, not all
A function can be both surjective and injective, which just means that for every
As mentioned before, the inverse of a function is both surjective and injective!
A convex function is a continuous function whose value at the midpoint of every interval in its domain does not exceed the arithmetic mean of its values at the ends of the interval. (Convex Function. Weisstein, Eric W. Wolfram MathWorld)
A convex region is one in which any two points in the region can be joined by a straight line that does not leave the region.
Which is to say that a convex function has a minimum, and only one (and this is also the only position where the derivative is 0).
More formally, a function is convex if the second derivative is positive everywhere. A function can be convex on a range
In higher dimensions, these derivatives aren't scalar values, so we instead define convexity if the Hessian
Transcendental functions are those that are not polynomial, e.g.
Logarithms are frequently encountered. They have many useful properties, such as turning multiplication into addition:
Multiplying many small numbers is problematic with computers, leading to underflow errors. Logarithms are commonly used to turn this kind of multiplication into addition and avoid underflow errors.
Note that
Often you may see a distinction made between solving a problem analytically (sometimes algebraeically is used) and solving a problem numerically.
Solving a problem analytically means you can exploit properties of the objects and equations, e.g. through methods from calculus, avoiding substituting numerical values for the variables you are manipulating (that is, you only need to manipulate symbols). If a problem may be solved analytically, the resulting solution is called a closed form solution (or the analytic solution) and is an exact solution.
Not all problems can be solved analytically; generally more complex mathematical models have no closed form solution. These problems are also often the ones of most interest. Such problems need to be approximated numerically, which involves evaluating the equations many times by substituting different numerical values for variables. The result is an approximate (numerical) solution.
You'll often see a caveat with algorithms that they only work for linear models. On the other hand, some models are touted for their capacity for nonlinear models.
A linear model is a model which takes the general form:
Note that this function does not need to produce a literal line. The "linear" constraint does not apply to the predictor variables
"Linear" refers to the parameters; i.e. the function must be "linear in the parameters", meaning that the parameters
A nonlinear model includes parameters such as
Many artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are based on or benefit from some kind of metric. In this context the term has a concrete definition.
The typical case for metrics is around similarity. Say you have a bunch of random variables
How do we define "similar"?
We'll use a distance function
If all these are satisfied, we say that
If only reflexivity and symmetry are satisfied, we have a semi-metric instead.
So we can create a feature
that the lower the distance (metric), the higher the probability.