Monoids by Mark Seemann
Introduction to monoids for object-oriented programmers.
This article is part of a larger series about monoids, semigroups, and related concepts. In this article, you'll learn what a monoid is, and what distinguishes it from a semigroup.
Monoids form a subset of semigroups. The rules that govern monoids are stricter than those for semigroups, so you'd be forgiven for thinking that it would make sense to start with semigroups, and then build upon that definition to learn about monoids. From a strictly hierarchical perspective, that would make sense, but I think that monoids are more intuitive. When you see the most obvious monoid example, you'll see that they cover operations from everyday life. It's easy to think of examples of monoids, while you have to think harder to find some good semigroup examples. That's the reason I think that you should start with monoids.
Monoid laws #
What do addition (
40 + 2) and multiplication (
6 * 7) have in common?
- binary operations
- with a neutral element.
Binary operation #
Let's start with the most basic property. That an operation is binary means that it works on two values. Perhaps you mostly associate the word binary with binary numbers, such as 101010, but the word originates from Latin and means something like of two. Astronomers talk about binary stars, but the word is dominantly used in computing context: apart from binary numbers, you may also have heard about binary trees. When talking about binary operations, it's implied that both input values are of the same type, and that the return type is the same as the input type. In other words, a C# method like this is a proper binary operation:
public static Foo Op(Foo x, Foo y)
Op is an instance method on the
Foo class, it can also look like this:
public Foo Op (Foo foo)
On the other hand, this isn't a binary operation:
public static Baz Op(Foo f, Bar b)
Although it takes two input arguments, they're of different types, and the return type is a third type.
Since all involved arguments and return values are of the same type, a binary operation exhibits what Eric Evans in Domain-Driven Design calls Closure of Operations.
In order to form a monoid, the binary operation must be associative. This simply means that the order of evaluation doesn't matter. For example, for addition, it means that
(2 + 3) + 4 = 2 + (3 + 4) = 2 + 3 + 4 = 9
Likewise, for multiplication
(2 * 3) * 4 = 2 * (3 * 4) = 2 * 3 * 4 = 24
Expressed as the above
Op instance method, associativity would require that
true in the following code:
var areEqual = foo1.Op(foo2).Op(foo3) == foo1.Op(foo2.Op(foo3));
On the left-hand side,
foo1.Op(foo2) is evaluated first, and the result then evaluated with
foo3. On the right-hand side,
foo2.Op(foo3) is evaluated first, and then used as an input argument to
foo1.Op. Since the left-hand side and the right-hand side are compared with the
== operator, associativity requires that
In C#, if you have a custom monoid like
Foo, you'll have to override
Equals and implement the
== operator in order to make all of this work.
Neutral element #
The third rule for monoids is that there must exist a neutral value. In the normal jargon, this is called the identity element, and this is what I'm going to be calling it from now on. I only wanted to introduce the concept using a friendlier name.
The identity element is a value that doesn't 'do' anything. For addition, for example, it's zero, because adding zero to a value doesn't change the value:
0 + 42 = 42 + 0 = 42
As an easy exercise, see if you can figure out the identity value for multiplication.
As implied by the above sum, the identity element must act neutrally both when applied to the left-hand side and the right-hand side of another value. For our
Foo objects, it could look like this:
var hasIdentity = Foo.Identity.Op(foo) == foo.Op(Foo.Identity) && foo.Op(Foo.Identity) == foo;
Foo.Identity is a static read-only field of the type
There are plenty of examples of monoids. The most obvious examples are addition and multiplication, but there are more. Depending on your perspective, you could even say that there's more than one addition monoid, because there's one for integers, one for real numbers, and so on. The same can be said for multiplication.
There are also two monoids over boolean values called all and any. If you have a binary operation over boolean values called all, how do you think it works? What would be the identity value? What about any?
I'll leave you to ponder (or look up) all and any, and instead, in the next articles, show you some slightly more interesting monoids.
- Angular addition monoid
- Strings, lists, and sequences as a monoid
- Money monoid
- Convex hull monoid
- Tuple monoids
- Function monoids
- Endomorphism monoid
- Maybe monoids
- Monoids accumulate
==operator. On the other hand, there's no
TimeSpan, because what does it mean to multiply two durations? What would the dimension be? Time squared?
A monoid (not to be confused with a monad) is a binary operation that satisfies the two monoid laws: that the operation is associative, and that an identity element exists. Addition and multiplication are prime examples, but several others exist.
(By the way, the identity element for multiplication is one (1), the all monoid is boolean and, and the any monoid is boolean or.)
Next: Angular addition monoid