Partitionere

Partitionere is a verb used in Danish and Norwegian meaning to divide something into parts or to separate a space into distinct areas. The related noun in English is partition, and the verb in English is to partition. The term is derived from Latin partitio through French partitionner, and it is used across disciplines to denote division into components.

In mathematics, a partition of a set is a collection of nonempty, pairwise disjoint subsets whose union equals the original set. Each element belongs to exactly one subset. Partitions are central in combinatorics, number theory, and probability, and they underpin concepts such as equivalence relations and quotient structures.

In computing, partitioning refers to dividing storage or data into separate regions or units. Disk partitioning creates logical sections of a storage device, commonly using MBR or GPT partition tables, to organize files, install systems, or apply different file systems. Database partitioning distributes data across multiple partitions to improve performance, scalability, or manageability, with methods such as horizontal (sharding) or vertical partitioning. In data science, partitioning data into training, validation, and test sets is standard practice.

In planning and analysis, partitioning can describe the division of a domain into zones, sectors, or clusters for management, allocation of resources, or study. The term conveys separation while preserving the whole, and its precise meaning depends on the discipline.

See also: partition (disambiguation), set partition, disk partitioning, database partitioning.