For the function that maps a Person to their Favorite Food, the image of Gabriela is Apple. The preimage of Apple is the set {Gabriela, Maryam}. The preimage of Fish is the empty set. The image of the subset {Richard, Maryam} is {Rice, Apple}. The preimage of {Rice, Apple} is {Gabriela, Richard, Maryam}.
Inmathematics, for a function, theimage of an input value is the single output value produced by when passed. Thepreimage of an output value is the set of input values that produce.
More generally, evaluating at eachelement of a given subset of itsdomain produces a set, called the "image of under (or through)". Similarly, theinverse image (orpreimage) of a given subset of thecodomain is the set of all elements of that map to a member of
Theimage of the function is the set of all output values it may produce, that is, the image of. Thepreimage of is the preimage of the codomain. Because it always equals (the domain of), it is rarely used.
Image and inverse image may also be defined for generalbinary relations, not just functions.
is a function from domain to codomain. The image of element is element. The preimage of element is the set {}. The preimage of element is. is a function from domain to codomain. The image of all elements in subset is subset. The preimage of is subset is a function from domain to codomain The yellow oval inside is the image of. The preimage of is the entire domain
The word "image" is used in three related ways. In these definitions, is afunction from theset to the set
If is a member of then the image of under denoted is thevalue of when applied to is alternatively known as the output of for argument
Given the function is said totake the value ortake as a value if there exists some in the function's domain such that Similarly, given a set is said totake a value in if there existssome in the function's domain such that However, takes [all] values in and is valued in means that forevery point in the domain of .
Throughout, let be a function. Theimage under of a subset of is the set of all for It is denoted by or by when there is no risk of confusion. Usingset-builder notation, this definition can be written as[1][2]
This induces a function where denotes thepower set of a set that is the set of allsubsets of See§ Notation below for more.
Theimage of a function is the image of its entiredomain, also known as therange of the function.[3] This last usage should be avoided because the word "range" is also commonly used to mean thecodomain of
"Preimage" redirects here. For the cryptographic attack on hash functions, seepreimage attack.
Let be a function from to Thepreimage orinverse image of a set under denoted by is the subset of defined by
Other notations include and[4] The inverse image of asingleton set, denoted by or by is also called thefiber or fiber over or thelevel set of The set of all the fibers over the elements of is afamily of sets indexed by
For example, for the function the inverse image of would be Again, if there is no risk of confusion, can be denoted by and can also be thought of as a function from the power set of to the power set of The notation should not be confused with that forinverse function, although it coincides with the usual one for bijections in that the inverse image of under is the image of under
The traditional notations used in the previous section do not distinguish the original function from the image-of-sets function; likewise they do not distinguish the inverse function (assuming one exists) from the inverse image function (which again relates the powersets). Given the right context, this keeps the notation light and usually does not cause confusion. But if needed, an alternative[5] is to give explicit names for the image and preimage as functions between power sets:
Some texts refer to the image of as the range of[8] but this usage should be avoided because the word "range" is also commonly used to mean thecodomain of
defined by Theimage of the set under is Theimage of the function is Thepreimage of is Thepreimage of is also Thepreimage of under is theempty set
defined by Theimage of under is and theimage of is (the set of allpositive real numbers and zero). Thepreimage of under is Thepreimage of set under is the empty set, because the negative numbers do not have square roots in the set of reals.
defined by Thefibers areconcentric circles about theorigin, the origin itself, and theempty set (respectively), depending on whether (respectively). (If then thefiber is the set of all satisfying the equation that is, the origin-centered circle with radius)
The results relating images and preimages to the (Boolean) algebra ofintersection andunion work for any collection of subsets, not just for pairs of subsets:
With respect to the algebra of subsets described above, the inverse image function is alattice homomorphism, while the image function is only asemilattice homomorphism (that is, it does not always preserve intersections).
Kernel of a function – Equivalence relation expressing that two elements have the same image under a functionPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
Set inversion – Mathematical problem of finding the set mapped by a specified function to a certain range