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In mathematics, even and odd ordinals extend the concept of parity from the natural numbers to the ordinal numbers. They are useful in some transfinite induction proofs.
The literature contains a few equivalent definitions of the parity of an ordinal α:
Unlike the case of even integers, one cannot go on to characterize even ordinals as ordinal numbers of the form β2 = β + β. Ordinal multiplication is not commutative, so in general 2β ≠ β2. In fact, the even ordinal ω + 4 cannot be expressed as β + β, and the ordinal number
is not even.
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