Question

What is a relation and a function?

Answer 1

1. A "relation" is just a relationship between sets of information. Think of all the people in one of your classes, and think of their heights. The pairing of names and heights is a relation. In relations and functions, the pairs of names and heights are "ordered", which means one comes first and the other comes second.

2. he set of all the starting points is called "the domain" and the set of all the ending points is called "the range." The domain is what you start with; the range is what you end up with. The domain is the x's; the range is the y's.

3. A function is a "well-behaved" relation. Just as with members of your own family, some members of the family of pairing relationships are better behaved than other. (Warning: This means that, while all functions are relations, since they pair information, not all relations are functions. Functions are a sub-classification of relations.) When we say that a function is "a well-behaved relation", we mean that, given a starting point, we know exactly where to go; given an x, we get only and exactly one y.

Refer to this website: http://www.purplemath.com/modules/fcns.htm