Minnum

Minnum is a term encountered in various technical contexts to denote the minimum or smallest numerical value within a set of data, sequence, or constraint. It is not a standard mathematical symbol or universal function, but rather a generic identifier that may appear in code, problem statements, or documentation to label the minimal value of interest. In programming and data processing, minnum is typically produced by an operation that compares elements and selects the smallest one. In many languages and libraries, this operation is implemented as built-in functions such as min or MIN, while programs may define their own function named minnum for clarity or domain-specific behavior.

In mathematics, minnum may be used informally as a placeholder for the minimum value that satisfies a condition, for example the smallest number meeting a set of inequalities or constraints. It can appear in optimization problems, where the objective is to minimize a quantity, often described as finding the minimum number or argmin of a function. The exact handling of edge cases, such as empty sets or non-numeric entries, depends on the context and the conventions of the field or programming language.

Because minnum is not a formal universal term, its meaning is highly context-dependent. Users should rely on the surrounding definitions in a text or codebase to determine how minnum is determined and what operations are allowed on it. Related concepts include minimum, min, argmin, and order statistics. See also: MIN function (SQL and spreadsheet software), Python built-in min, and the general notion of the minimum element in a set.