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In mathematics, a ternary relation or triadic relation is a finitary relation in which the number of places in the relation is three. Ternary relations may also be referred to as 3-adic, 3-ary, 3-dimensional, or 3-place.
Just as a binary relation is formally defined as a set of pairs, i.e. a subset of the Cartesian product A × B of some sets A and B, so a ternary relation is a set of triples, forming a subset of the Cartesian product A × B × C of three sets A, B and C.
Example – graph of a binary function
A function ƒ: A × B → C in two variables, taking values in two sets A and B, respectively, is formally a function that associates to every pair (a,b) in A × B an element ƒ(a, b) in C. Therefore its graph consists of pairs of the form ((a, b), ƒ(a, b)). Such pairs in which the first element is itself a pair are often identified with triples. This makes the graph of ƒ a ternary relation between A, B and C, consisting of all triples (a, b, ƒ(a, b)), for all a in A and b in B.
Example – cyclic orders
Given any set A whose elements are arranged on a circle, one can define a ternary relation R on A, i.e. a subset of A3 = A × A × A, by stipulating that R(a, b, c) holds if and only if the elements a, b and c are pairwise different and when going from a to c in a clockwise direction one passes through b. For example if A = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 } represents the hours on a clock face, then R(8, 12, 4) holds and R(12, 8, 4) does not hold.
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