Overview

The appendix reviews mathematical techniques that are used in the book. The appendix also serves as a glossary of symbols, notation, and concepts employed in the text. For more information on the topics covered here, the reader should consult references supplied at the end of the appendix.

In an attempt to keep the presentation as clear as possible, we employ the theorem-proof style whenever appropriate. Major results of independent interest are encapsulated as theorems. A lemma is used to denote an auxiliary result that is used as a stepping stone toward a theorem. We use the term proposition as a way to announce a minor theorem. A corollary is a direct consequence of a theorem or proposition. A hypothesis is a statement that is taken for further reasoning in a proof. For more information on the subject of writing for mathematical or technical sciences, we recommend a very clear and useful book by Higham [122].

A.1 Notation and Methods of Proof

We often use the term set. The great German mathematician G. Cantor (1845-1918), the creator of the theory of sets, defines a set as any collection of...