Explanation of The Name
To see where the snake lemma gets its name, expand the diagram above as follows:
and then note that the exact sequence that is the conclusion of the lemma can be drawn on this expanded diagram in the reversed "S" shape of a slithering snake.
Read more about this topic: Snake Lemma
Famous quotes containing the words explanation of the, explanation of and/or explanation:
“To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, about what is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.”
—Bas Van Fraassen (b. 1941)
“How strange a scene is this in which we are such shifting figures, pictures, shadows. The mystery of our existence—I have no faith in any attempted explanation of it. It is all a dark, unfathomed profound.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)