************* Preliminaries ************* Phlex adopts a *functional programming* paradigm, which is heavily influenced by mathematics. To adequately describe what functional programming is, we first introduce function notation and what we mean by "types". With these ingredients, we are then able to discuss functional programming and how it is supported by data-flow graphs. .. toctree:: :maxdepth: 2 ch_preliminaries/function_notation ch_preliminaries/types ch_preliminaries/sequences ch_preliminaries/functional_programming ch_preliminaries/data_flow