In: Math
A certain business keeps a database of information about its customers. A. Let C be the rule which assigns to each customer shown in the table his or her home phone number. Is C a function? Explain your reasoning.
If we assume that every person has
(i) a home phone number
(ii) no more than one home phone number
then and only then rule
is a function.
Let us denote the people by
, where
stands for the first name in the book,
for the second name, etc. Let the corresponding phone numbers be
denoted by
, where
is the phone number of
,
is the phone number of
and so on.
If for any
and
if
, i.e. the phone numbers of
and
are different then
and
are two different people because one person is assumed not to have
more than one home phone number.
Thus, we have
for any
. Taking the contrapositive we get
for any
. So
is a function.
But if any person, say
is allowed to have more than one phone numbers, then the value of
is not unique. Therefore
does not become a function in such a case.
Also if some person
does not have a home phone number, then
does not exist, and therefore
does not become a function in such a case.
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