Formal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term formal has a number of uses, including:

Contents 1 General 2 Social 3 Philosophical 4 Mathematics 4.1 Logic and Language 5 Computer science 6 Linguistic 7 Chemical 8 Political Science 9 See also

[edit] General

• relating to formality
• opposite of informal

[edit] Social

• Formal occasion
  • Formal attire worn on such occasions
  • Formals are particular meals at some British universities
  • In Australian or British English, a formal is the equivalent of the American prom dance.
  • In American English, a "formal" is organized by a college or university organization, typically but not always a fraternity or sorority.
• Informal occasion (included as Informal redirect here); see Dress code (Western) for the distinctions between Formal, Semi-formal, and Informal
  • Informal attire (not to be confused with Casual -- see Dress code (Western))

[edit] Philosophical

• relating to form, i.e. appearance rather than essence.
  • relating to Formalism, i.e. emphasis on form over content or meaning.
• formal logic logical argument based only on the form and not on the meaning.
• Formal cause, Aristotle's intrinsic, determining cause.

[edit] Mathematics

• formal power series, a generalization of power series without requiring convergence, used in combinatorics;
• formal calculation, a calculation which is systematic, but without a rigorous justification;
• formal set theory as opposed to naive set theory;
• formal derivative, an operation on elements of a polynomial ring which mimics the form of the derivative from calculus.

[edit] Logic and Language

• formal system, an abstract means of generating inferences in a formal language;
  • formal language, comprising the symbolic "words" or "sentences" of a formal system;
    • formal grammar, a grammar describing a formal language;
  • formal proof, a fully rigorous proof as is possible only in a formal system.

[edit] Computer science

• formal methods in computer science, including:
  • formal specification describes what a system should do, not how it should do it
  • formal verification proves correctness of a system

See also the Language section of Mathematics, above

[edit] Linguistic

• Formal equivalence word-for-word translation (especially of the Bible)

See also the Language section of Mathematics, above

[edit] Chemical

• A unit of concentration
• short or prefix form for formalin
• short or prefix form for formaldehyde
• synonym for dimethoxymethane

[edit] Political Science

• Formal theory refers to mathematical modeling, because otherwise "theory" refers more broadly to political philosophy

[edit] See also

• Informal economy

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.