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Bijection, injection and surjection


bijective

injective-only

injective

surjective-only

In mathematics, injections, surjections and bijections are classes of functions distinguished by the manner in which arguments (input expressions from the domain) and images (output expressions from the codomain) are related or mapped to each other.

A function maps elements from its domain to elements in its codomain. Given a function

An injective function need not be surjective (not all elements of the codomain may be associated with arguments), and a surjective function need not be injective (some images may be associated with more than one argument). The four possible combinations of injective and surjective features are illustrated in the diagrams to the right.

A function is injective (one-to-one) if every possible element of the codomain is mapped to by at most one argument. Equivalently, a function is injective if it maps distinct arguments to distinct images. An injective function is an injection. The formal definition is the following.

A function is surjective (onto) if every possible image is mapped to by at least one argument. In other words, every element in the codomain has non-empty preimage. Equivalently, a function is surjective if its image is equal to its codomain. A surjective function is a surjection. The formal definition is the following.


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