From Encyclopedia Jr, free information reference for Kids
Generally, a partition is a splitting of something into parts. The term is used in a variety of senses:
[edit] Chemistry
- Nernst partition law
- Partitioning, a synonym for liquid-liquid extraction
[edit] Computer science
- Disk partitioning, the dividing of a hard disk's storage space into independent parts
- Partition (mainframe), for dividing a computer into several independent virtual computers
- Partition also refers to an algorithm used in quicksort which separates a list into two sublists, those elements less than or equal to a value and those greater than it. It is also used in selection algorithms.
- Partition (database) for splitting a database and access.
- Partition problem, an NP-complete problem: given a set of integers, can the set be partitioned into two subsets with equal sums?
[edit] Law
- Partition (law), to divide up a piece of land into separate portions representing the proportionate interests of the tenants
[edit] Mathematics
- List of partition topics
- Partition of a set, a collection of non-empty subsets such that every element belongs to one and only one of the subsets
- Partition (number theory), a way to write a positive integer as a sum of other positive integers; the partition function gives the number of different ways to partition a number
- Partition problem, an NP-complete problem: given a set of integers, can the set be partitioned into two subsets with equal sums?
- A partition of unity is a set of functions whose sum is the constant function
- Partition of an interval, used in the theory of the Riemann integral and the Riemann-Stieltjes integral
[edit] Music
See: Partition (music)
[edit] Physics
- Partition function (statistical mechanics).
- Partition function (quantum field theory).
[edit] Political geography
Notable examples are:
- Partitions of Poland and Poland-Lithuania in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries
- Partitions of Bengal in 1905 and 1947
- Partition of India (colonial British India) in 1947 into the independent dominions (later republics) of India and Pakistan (which included modern day Bangladesh)
- Partition of Punjab in 1966 into the states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh
- Partition of Pakistan in 1971, when East Pakistan became the independant nation of Bangladesh after the Bangladesh Liberation War
- 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine (region)
- Partition of Ireland in 1920 into the independent Irish Free State and (British) Northern Ireland
- Treaty of Kars of 1921, which partitioned Ottoman Armenia between the republic of Turkey and the then Soviet Union (Western and Eastern Armenia)
- Partition of Vietnam in 1954
- Partitions of Luxembourg, last in 1838 into Duchy of Luxembourg and Belgian province
[edit] See also
- Division (disambiguation)
