Monotone function: exercises

Written by Kevin Clancy last updated

Try these exercises and become a deity of monotonicity.

Monotone composition

Let , and be posets and let and be monotone functions. Prove that their composition is a monotone function from to .

Evil twin

Let and be posets. A function is called antitone if it reverses order: that is, is antitone whenever implies . Prove that the composition of two antitone functions is monotone.

Partial monotonicity

A two argument function is called partially monotone in the 1st argument whenever and are posets and for all , implies . Likewise a 2-argument function is called partially monotone in the second argument whenever and are posets and for all , implies .

Let , and be posets, and let be a function that is partially monotone in both of its arguments. Furthermore, let and be monotone functions.

Prove that the function defined as is monotone.

Brain storm

List all of the commonly used two argument functions you can think of that are partially monotone in both arguments. Also, list all of the commonly used two argument functions you can think of that are partially monotone in one argument and partially antitone in the other.