In mathematics, a function on the real numbers is called a step function (or staircase function) if it can be written as a finite linear combination of indicator functions of intervals. Informally speaking, a step function is a piecewise constant function having only finitely many pieces.
Read more about Step Function: Definition and First Consequences, Examples, Properties
Famous quotes containing the words step and/or function:
“The energetic action of the times develops individualism, and the religious appear isolated. I esteem this a step in the right direction. Heaven deals with us on no representative system. Souls are not saved in bundles.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“As a medium of exchange,... worrying regulates intimacy, and it is often an appropriate response to ordinary demands that begin to feel excessive. But from a modernized Freudian view, worryingas a reflex response to demandnever puts the self or the objects of its interest into question, and that is precisely its function in psychic life. It domesticates self-doubt.”
—Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. Worrying and Its Discontents, in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)