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Maximal ≠ Maximum!
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April 20, 2015 / Tai-Danae Bradley Welcome! Math3ma is a

math blog maintained by
Tai-Danae, a PhD student at
the CUNY Graduate Center. 

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" maximal" and " maximum" generally do NOT mean the same thing Galois Theory

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in mathematics? It wasn't until I had to think about Zorn's Lemma in the Group Theory

context of maximal ideals that I actually thought about this, but more on Linear Algebra

that in a moment. Let's start by comparing the definitions: Module Theory

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Do you see the difference? An element is a maximum if it is larger than

every single element in the set, whereas an element is maximal if it is not
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smaller than any other element in the set (where "smaller" is determined
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by the partial order ≤). Yes, it's true that the* maximum also satisfies this

property, i.e. every maximum element is also maximal. But the converse is May 2017

not true: if an element is maximal, it may not be the maximum! Why? The April 2017

key is that these definitions are made on a partially ordered set. Basically,
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partially ordered just means it makes sense to use the words "bigger" or
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"smaller" - we have a way to compare elements. In a totally ordered set
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ALL elements are comparable with each other. But in a partially ordered
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set SOME, but not necessarily all, elements can be compared. This means

it's possible to have an element that is maximal yet fails to be the November 2016

maximum because it cannot be compared with some elements. It's not too October 2016

hard to see that when a set is totally ordered, "maximal = maximum."**

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How about an example? Here's one I like from this scholarly site which
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also gives an example of a miminal/minimum element (whose definitions

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are dual to those above).

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Example March 2016

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Consider the set

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where the partial order is set inclusion, ⊆. Then

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{d, o} is minimal because {d, o} ⊉ x for every x ∈ X . July 2015

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i.e. there isn't a single element in X that is "smaller" than
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{d, o}

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{g, o, a, d} is maximal because {g, o, a, d} ⊈ x for every x ∈ X

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i.e. there isn't a single element in X that is "larger" than

{g, o, a, d}

Plus there's more in

 The Back Pocket!

{o, a, f } is both minimal and maximal because

{o, a, f } ⊉ x for every x ∈ X

{o, a, f } ⊈ x for every x ∈ X

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Tai-Danae Bradley
@math3ma
{d, o, g} is neither minimal nor maximal because
aaaaand here's the back:

there is an x ∈ X such that x ⊆ {d, o, g}, namely x = {d, o}

there is an x ∈ X such that {d, o, g} ⊆ x, namely

x = {g, o, a, d}

X has NEITHER a maximum or a minimum because

there is no M ∈ X such that x ⊆ M for every x ∈ X Jul 27, 2017

there is no m ∈ X such that m ⊆ x for every x ∈ X

Tai-Danae Bradley
@math3ma

Sorry in advance if you

see me wearing the
same t-shirt for the next
1,381,742 days
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Let's now relate our discussion above to ring theory. One defines an ideal Embed View on Twitter

M in a ring R to be a maximal ideal if M ≠ R and the only ideal that

contains M is either M or R itself, i.e. if I ⊴ R is an ideal such that

M ⊆ I ⊆ R , then we must have either I = M or I = R . Instagram, lately:

Not surprisingly, this coincides with the definition of maximality above. We

simply let X be the set of all proper ideals in the ring R endowed with

the partial order of inclusion ⊆. The only difference is that in this context,

because we're in a ring, we have the second option I = R .

I think a good way to see maximal ideals in action is in the proof of this

result:
As a final remark, the notions of "a maximal element" and "an upper

bound" come together in Zorn's Lemma which is needed to prove that

every proper ideal in a ring is contained in a maximal ideal. I should

mention that an upper bound B on a partially ordered set (a.k.a. a

"poset") has the same definition as the maximum EXCEPT that B is not

required to be inside the set. More precisely, we define an upper bound on

a subset Y of X to be an element B ∈ X such that y ≤ B for every

y ∈ Y.

So here's the deal with Zorn's Lemma: It's not too hard to prove that every

finite poset has a maximal element. But what if we don't know if the given

poset is finite? Or what happens if it's infinite? How can we tell if it has a

maximal element? Zorn's Lemma answers that question:

As I mentioned above, it's this result which is needed to prove that every

proper ideal is contained in a maximal ideal***. If you'd like to see the

proof, I've typed it up in a separate PDF here. It actually implies a weaker

statement, called Krull's Theorem (1929), which says that every non-zero

ring with unity contains a maximal ideal.

Footnotes

*One can easily show that if a set has a maximum it must be unique, hence

THE maximum.

** Here's the proof: Let (X , ≤) be a totally ordered set and let m ∈ X be  Math3ma RSS
a maximal element. It suffices to show m is the maximum. Since X has a
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total order, either m ≤ x or x ≤ m for every x ∈ X . If the latter, then m

is the maximum. If the former, then m = x by definition of maximal. In

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either case, we have x ≤ m for all x ∈ X . Hence m is the maximum.
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*** Note this is NOT the same as saying that every maximal ideal contains
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all the proper ideals in a ring! Remember, maximal ≠ maximum!!
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