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18 - Products and coproducts

from Part Two - Doing Category Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

Eugenia Cheng
Affiliation:
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
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Summary

In this chapter we cover the more advanced universal properties of products and coproducts. We define products directly and then show that this is a terminal object in a more complicated category, the category of cones over the pair of objects in question. This enables us to immediately deduce a uniqueness result. We show that, in Set, cartesian products are categorical products, and examine what uniqueness means. We show that, inside a poset expressed as a category, products are given by least upper bounds. We examine products of posets, and show that this gives us the categories of privilege; we also examine products of monoids and of groups. We then define coproducts as the dual concept, before unraveling this to get a direct definition. We show that, in Set, disjoint unions are coproducts, and we mention decategorification and relationship between categorical (co)products and arithmetic. We show that coproducts in posets are greatest lower bounds, and the coproducts of posets work but coproducts of tosets in general do not, and that coproducts of monoids exist but are much harder than products. We briefly mention coproducts of topological spaces and of categories.

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The Joy of Abstraction
An Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life
, pp. 237 - 269
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Products and coproducts
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.022
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  • Products and coproducts
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.022
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Products and coproducts
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.022
Available formats
×