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Generalisation of Dedekind's problem of the enumeration of coherent structures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2011

J. Ansell
Affiliation:
University of Keele
A. Bendell
Affiliation:
Dundee College of Technology
S. Humble
Affiliation:
Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham

Synopsis

In the context of reliability theory, two definitions are given for coherent functions of n variables, where both function and variables can take any of l possible levels. The enumeration problem for such functions is discussed and several recursive bounds are derived. In the case of l = 2 (the Dedekind problem) a recursive upper bound is derived which is better than the previous best explicit upper bound forn < 15, and also provides a systematic improvement on this bound for larger values of n.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1981

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