title: Ternary
text: # Ternary
  
  Ternary (from Latin ternarius) or trinary is an adjective meaning "composed of three items". It can refer to:
  
  ## Mathematics and logic
  
  * Ternary numeral system, a base-3 counting system
     * Balanced ternary, a positional numeral system, useful for comparison logic
  * Ternary logic, a logic system with the values true, false, and some other value
  * Ternary plot or ternary graph, a plot that shows the ratios of three proportions
  * Ternary relation, a finitary relation in which the number of places in the relation is three
  * Ternary operation, an operation that takes three parameters
  * Ternary function, a function that takes three arguments
  
  ## Computing
  
  * Ternary signal, a signal that can assume three significant values
  * Ternary computer, a computer using a ternary numeral system
  * Ternary tree, a tree data structure in computer science
     * Ternary search tree, a ternary (three-way) tree data structure of strings
  * Ternary search, a computer science technique for finding the minimum or maximum of a function
  * Ternary heap, a data structure in computer science
  * Ternary Golay code, a perfect [11, 6, 5] ternary linear code
  * ?:, a ternary conditional operator used for basic conditional expressions in several programming languages
  
  ## Other uses
  
  * Ternary complex, a complex formed by the interaction of three molecules
  * Ternary compound, a type of chemical compound
  * Ternary form, a form used for structuring music
  * Ternary name for any taxon below the rank of species
  