Dedekind Number

Dedekind Number

In mathematics, the Dedekind numbers are a rapidly growing sequence of integers named after Richard Dedekind, who defined them in 1897. The Dedekind number M(n) counts the number of monotonic Boolean functions of n variables. Equivalently, it counts the number of antichains of subsets of an n-element set, the number of elements in a free distributive lattice with n generators, or the number of abstract simplicial complexes with n elements.

Accurate asymptotic estimates of M(n) and an exact expression as a summation, are known. However Dedekind's problem of computing the values of M(n) remains difficult: no closed-form expression for M(n) is known, and exact values of M(n) have been found only for n ≤ 8.