monomials 係唔係 polynomials 其中一種？

有些人認為monomials (單項式) 屬於 polynomials (多項式)。另一些人則認為不是。(他們認為單項式不是多項式，而多項式是由起碼兩個或以上的單項式相加起來而成。這是最常見單項式及多項式的定義。 )
但認為monomials (單項式) 屬於 polynomials (多項式)是有好處。理由是因為多項式加多項式結果可以是單項式。如 (3x+4)+(-2x-4)=x，若區分單項式不是多項式會令理論研究變得複雜。若然把單項式也歸納為多項式，則多項式相加的和也是多項式，情況比較簡單。

In mathematics, a monomial is a particular kind of polynomial, having just one term. Given a natural number n and a variable x, the power function defined by the rule f(x)=xn is therefore a monomial. Given several unknown variables (say, x, y, z) and corresponding natural number exponents (say, a, b, c), the product of the resulting univariate monomials is also a monomial (e.g., the function determined by the rule f(x)=xaybzc).If coefficients are allowed (this may not be consistent), then a constant multiple of a monomial is also counted as a monomial (e.g., 7xaybzc).
The most obvious fact about monomials is that any polynomial is a linear combination of them, so they can serve as basis vectors in a vector space of polynomials - a fact of constant implicit use in mathematics. An interesting fact from functional analysis is that the full set of monomials tn is not required to span a linear subspace of C[0,1] that is dense for the uniform norm (sharpening the Stone-Weierstrass theorem). It is enough that the sum of the reciprocals n-1 diverge (the Müntz-Szász theorem).
And so,a monomial is a kind of polynomial.