Reductions

n. act of decreasing, act of lessening, act of diminishing

Reductions (known as Reducciones de Indios, or simply Reducciones in Spanish; also Congregacíones) were settlements founded by the Spanish colonizers of the New World with the purpose of assimilating indigenous populations into European culture and religion.Already since the beginning of the Spanish presence in the Americas, the Crown had been concerned with the building of indigenous towns. The evolution of this concern can be seen in the documents issued from the Court such as the Instrucciones a Ovando (1501), the Leyes de Burgos (1512), and the Leyes Nuevas (1542). In the instructions to Nicolás Ovando, for example, the Crown ordered that the Indians live in the cities of the Spanish (thus favoring a total assimilation of the indigenous population). The Leyes de Burgos--the first law code of the Spanish in the New World--encharged the encomenderos with the indoctrination of the Indians, and decreed that the Indians should live near Spanish settlements, "so that the continuous conversion of those that will have it, through going to church on the feast days to hear mass and the divine rites, and seeing how the Spanish live" would be quickly accomplished.
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Noun
1. the act of decreasing or reducing something
(synonym) decrease, diminution, step-down
(hypernym) change of magnitude
(hyponym) cut
(derivation) shrink, reduce
2. any process in which electrons are added to an atom or ion (as by removing oxygen or adding hydrogen); always occurs accompanied by oxidation of the reducing agent
(synonym) reducing
(hypernym) chemical reaction, reaction
3. the act of reducing complexity
(synonym) simplification
(hypernym) change
(hyponym) schematization, schematisation
(derivation) reduce

n. rundown

n. reduction, deduction, cutting off; discount, diminution, abatement; decreasing, abridgement, allowance; constriction, markdown, mitigation; rundown, trimming

normal form lenient evaluation name capture lazy evaluation Head Normal Form call-by-need Weak Head Normal Form 

(Or "contraction") The process of transforming an expression according to certain reduction rules. The most important forms are beta reduction (application of a lambda abstraction to one or more argument expressions) and delta reduction (application of a mathematical function to the required number of arguments).
An evaluation strategy (or reduction strategy), determines which part of an expression (which redex) to reduce first. There are many such strategies.
See graph reduction, string reduction, normal order reduction, applicative order reduction, parallel reduction, alpha conversion, beta conversion, delta conversion, eta conversion.
(1995-02-21)