arithmetic function
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any function whose domain is the positive integers and whose range is a subset of the complex numbers
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Encyclopedic overview
In number theory, an arithmetic, arithmetical, or number-theoretic function is generally any function whose domain is the set of positive integers and whose range is a subset of the complex numbers. Hardy & Wright include in their definition the requirement that an arithmetical function "expresses some arithmetical property of n". There is a larger class of number-theoretic functions that do not fit this definition, for example, the prime-counting functions. This article provides links to functions of both classes.
An example of an arithmetic function is the divisor function whose value at a positive integer n is equal to the number of divisors of n.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “arithmetic function” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.