In mathematics, one can often define a direct product of objects already known, giving a new one. This is generally the Cartesian product of the underlying sets, together with a suitably defined structure on the product set. More abstractly, one talks about the product in category theory, which formalizes these notions.
Examples are the product of sets (see Cartesian product), groups (described below), the product of rings and of other algebraic structures. The product of topological spaces is another instance.
There is also the direct sum – in some areas this is used interchangeably, in others it is a different concept.
Read more about Direct Product: Examples, Group Direct Product, Direct Product of Modules, Topological Space Direct Product, Direct Product of Binary Relations, Categorical Product, Internal and External Direct Product, Metric and Norm
Famous quotes containing the words direct and/or product:
“Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon; they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compass to direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel; for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)
“These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that will is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)