2

There are a number of occasions in the mathematics where the word "form" is used:

It seems that form is a special kind of function.

But I cannot readily see what properties a function should satisfy to be eligible to be called a form?

Sadeq Dousti
  • 3,291
  • I've always been told that a form is just a function with codomain $\mathbb{R}$ – Nick Feb 22 '16 at 23:08
  • 2
    There is also differential form. – Jeppe Stig Nielsen Feb 22 '16 at 23:12
  • 1
    I think the usage is historical but deeply ingrained and comes from the days when functions were thought of as having algebraic representations as opposed to the arbitrary functional relations that we think of in the modern set-theoretic approach. So a quadratic, or bilinear or differential or ... form referred to the algebraic form of the representation of the function. (But this is really a mathematics history question and I am not qualified as a historian.) – Rob Arthan Feb 22 '16 at 23:17
  • 1
    See of the form. Also here. – Lucian Feb 23 '16 at 06:59

0 Answers0