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Learning a new topic also entails learning its terminology. As a newbie to the subject, I'm amused by chapter headings like "Abstract Simplicial Complex" that s
by raymondh 7y ago
Learning a new topic also entails learning its terminology. As a newbie to the subject, I'm amused by chapter headings like "Abstract Simplicial Complex" that seem like an oxymoron :-)
- earthicus 7y agoFYI the word 'complex' in mathematics is often used similar to it's usage as an English noun - "a whole made up of interrelated parts", e.g. a building complex, apartment complex, military-industrial complex. A 'simplicial complex' is then, informally, "a whole made up of interrelated simplexes".
- jacobolus 7y agoA simplex is a point, line segment, triangle, tetrahedron, or higher-dimensional analog. A simplicial complex is a bunch of simplices stuck together (adjacent simplices might share a lower-dimensional simplex as a common boundary). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicial_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicial_complex I’m not convinced “abstract” is a good word here, but what they mean is that it doesn’t have any metrical/geometric relationships beyond the graph structure.