Pullbacks and Pushforwards
Note: the terms “pullback” and “pushforward” are used for other concepts than those presented in this page, especially within Category Theory
Given functions φ:A→B and f:B→X, the pullback of f along φ, written φ⋆f, is the composition f∘φ
A motivation for the name ‘pullback’ is that this construction may be described as “pulling f back along φ onto A"
Likewise, given φ:A→B and f:A→X, the pushforward of f along φ, written φ⋆f, is the composition f∘φ−1.
For this to make sense as written, φ must be injective. If φ is not injective, we define the pushforward to be (φ⋆f)(A)=f~(φ−1(A)) where φ−1(−) produces a preimage set and f~(−) applies f to each item of that set.