Composition

🅟 Feb 21, 2026

  🅤 Jun 28, 2026

Definition 1.

The composition of two binary relations $R$ and $S$ is the binary relation

\[S \circ R = \{(x, z) : (\exists y : x \,R\, y \,\land\, y \,S\, z) \}.\]

This is a set by Separation Schema:

\[S \circ R \subseteq \dom R \times \im S.\]

Proposition 1.

Let $X$ and $Y$ be two sets. For any binary relation $R$ on $X$ and $Y$,

\[R \circ \id_X = \id_Y \circ R = R.\]

Proposition 2. Associativity.

For any binary relations $R$, $S$ and $T$,

\[(R \circ S) \circ T = R \circ (S \circ T).\]

Proposition 3.

For any functions $f$ and $g$ on a set $X$, $f \circ g$ is also a function on $X$.


As a corollary of associativity of $\circ$ and Proposition 1:

Proposition 4.

For any set $X$, $(\rel(X, X), \circ)$ is a monoid with neutral element $\id_X$.

As a corollary of Proposition 1 and SUB-MOID > Proposition 1:

Proposition 5.

For any set $X$, $\fun(X, X)$ is a submonoid of $\rel(X, X)$ with neutral element $\id_X$.


Proposition 6.

For any binary relations $R$ and $S$,

\[(R \circ S)^{-1} = S^{-1} \circ R^{-1}.\]