Matroid

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A structure that captures the essence of a notion of "independence" that generalizes linear independence in vector spaces and acyclicality in graphs.

    "A matroid can be defined in terms of bases. A matroid consists of a ground set as well as a set of bases which is a nonempty subset of the power set of the ground set."

Example

More examples

"A matroid can be defined in terms of bases. A matroid consists of a ground set as well as a set of bases which is a nonempty subset of the power set of the ground set."

Etymology

From matrix + -oid. They were so named by Hassler Whitney in 1935 in an article titled “On the abstract properties of linear dependence”.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.