• Journal of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.531-540
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• 1995

There is much literature on the study of matrices over a finite Boolean algebra. But many results in Boolean matrix theory are stated only for binary Boolean matrices. This is due in part to a semiring isomorphism between the matrices over the Boolean algebra of subsets of a k element set and the k tuples of binary Boolean matrices. This isomorphism allows many questions concerning matrices over an arbitrary finite Boolean algebra to be answered using the binary Boolean case. However there are interesting results about the general (i.e. nonbinary) Boolean matrices that have not been mentioned and they differ somwhat from the binary case.

• Bulletin of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.337-342
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• 1995

A semiring is a binary system $(S, +, \times)$ such that (S, +) is an Abelian monoid (identity 0), (S,x) is a monoid (identity 1), $\times$ distributes over +, 0 $\times s s \times 0 = 0$ for all s in S, and $1 \neq 0$. Usually S denotes the system and $\times$ is denoted by juxtaposition. If $(S,\times)$ is Abelian, then S is commutative. Thus all rings are semirings. Some examples of semirings which occur in combinatorics are Boolean algebra of subsets of a finite set (with addition being union and multiplication being intersection) and the nonnegative integers (with usual arithmetic). The concepts of matrix theory are defined over a semiring as over a field. Recently a number of authors have studied various problems of semiring matrix theory. In particular, Minc [4] has written an encyclopedic work on nonnegative matrices.