Sequence - Types and Properties

Types and Properties

A subsequence of a given sequence is a sequence formed from the given sequence by deleting some of the elements without disturbing the relative positions of the remaining elements.

If the terms of the sequence are a subset of an ordered set, then a monotonically increasing sequence is one for which each term is greater than or equal to the term before it; if each term is strictly greater than the one preceding it, the sequence is called strictly monotonically increasing. A monotonically decreasing sequence is defined similarly. Any sequence fulfilling the monotonicity property is called monotonic or monotone. This is a special case of the more general notion of monotonic function.

The terms nondecreasing and nonincreasing are used in order to avoid any possible confusion with strictly increasing and strictly decreasing, respectively.

If the terms of a sequence are integers, then the sequence is an integer sequence. If the terms of a sequence are polynomials, then the sequence is a polynomial sequence.

If S is endowed with a topology, then it becomes possible to consider convergence of an infinite sequence in S. Such considerations involve the concept of the limit of a sequence.

If A is a set, the free monoid over A (denoted A*) is a monoid containing all the finite sequences (or strings) of zero or more elements drawn from A, with the binary operation of concatenation. The free semigroup A+ is the subsemigroup of A* containing all elements except the empty sequence.