Beta reduction
Revision as of 12:55, 30 January 2007 by MathematicalOrchid (talk | contribs) (I think my example actually included an eta-reduction as well as a beta conversion. Edited example.)
A beta reduction (also written β reduction) is where you actually apply a lambda function to an expression to generate a result.
For example, suppose we have
2*x*x + y
If we now replace every occurance of x with 7, we arrive at
2*7*7 + y
We have thus performed a beta reduction.
Also see Lambda calculus and the wikipedia lambda calculus article.