Cartesian product

American

noun

Mathematics.

the collection of all ordered pairs of two given sets such that the first elements of the pairs are chosen from one set and the second elements from the other set: this procedure generalizes to an infinite number of sets.

Cartesian product British

noun

Also called: cross product. maths logic the set of all ordered pairs of members of two given sets. The product A × B is the set of all pairs < a, b > where a is a member of A and b is a member of B

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of Cartesian product

First recorded in 1955–60

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The technical term for each cherry red form is an orthotope, defined as “the Cartesian product of orthogonal intervals known as a hyperrectangle, sometimes called a parallelotope.”

From Los Angeles Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023