Ternary
# Ternary

Ternary (from Latin ternarius) or trinary is an adjective meaning "composed of three items". It can refer to:

## Mathematics and logic

* Ternary numeral system, a base-3 counting system
   * Balanced ternary, a positional numeral system, useful for comparison logic
* Ternary logic, a logic system with the values true, false, and some other value
* Ternary plot or ternary graph, a plot that shows the ratios of three proportions
* Ternary relation, a finitary relation in which the number of places in the relation is three
* Ternary operation, an operation that takes three parameters
* Ternary function, a function that takes three arguments

## Computing

* Ternary signal, a signal that can assume three significant values
* Ternary computer, a computer using a ternary numeral system
* Ternary tree, a tree data structure in computer science
   * Ternary search tree, a ternary (three-way) tree data structure of strings
* Ternary search, a computer science technique for finding the minimum or maximum of a function
* Ternary heap, a data structure in computer science
* Ternary Golay code, a perfect [11, 6, 5] ternary linear code
* ?:, a ternary conditional operator used for basic conditional expressions in several programming languages

## Other uses

* Ternary complex, a complex formed by the interaction of three molecules
* Ternary compound, a type of chemical compound
* Ternary form, a form used for structuring music
* Ternary name for any taxon below the rank of species
