Diagram (category Theory) - Cones and Limits

Cones and Limits

A cone with vertex N of a diagram D : JC is a morphism from the constant diagram Δ(N) to D. The constant diagram is the diagram which sends every object of J to an object N of C and every morphism to the identity morphism on N.

The limit of a diagram D is a universal cone to D. That is, a cone through which all other cones uniquely factor. If the limit exists in a category C for all diagrams of type J one obtains a functor

lim : CJC

which sends each diagram to its limit.

Dually, the colimit of diagram D is a universal cone from D. If the colimit exists for all diagrams of type J one has a functor

colim : CJC

which sends each diagram to its colimit.

Read more about this topic:  Diagram (category Theory)

Famous quotes containing the words cones and, cones and/or limits:

    ...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.
    Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)

    Here was a little of everything in a small compass to satisfy the wants and the ambition of the woods,... but there seemed to me, as usual, a preponderance of children’s toys,—dogs to bark, and cats to mew, and trumpets to blow, where natives there hardly are yet. As if a child born into the Maine woods, among the pine cones and cedar berries, could not do without such a sugar-man or skipping-jack as the young Rothschild has.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “... Ain’t it a caution to us not to fix
    No limits to what rose in rubbing sticks
    On fire to scare away the pterodix
    When man first lived in caves along the creeks?”
    “Marvelous world in nineteen-twenty-six.”
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)