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https://mathoverflow.net/questions/4841/what-precisely-is-categorification#
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What precisely Is “Categorification”?
asked Nov 10 '09 at 11:22
Gil Kalai

anser 45
One way to think of categorification is that it's a generalization of enumerative combinatorics. When a combinatorialist sees a complicated formula that turns out to be positive they think "aha! this must be counting the size of some set!" and when they see an equality of two different positive formulas they think "aha! there must be a bijection explaining this equality!" This is a special case of categorification, because when you decategorify a set you just get a number and when you decategorify a bijection you just get an equality. As a combinatorialist I'm sure you can come up with some examples that nicely illustrate how this sort of categorification is not totally well-defined. ("What exactly do Catalan numbers count?" has many answers rather than a single right answer.)

A more sophisticated kind of categorification in combinatorics is "Combinatorial Species" which categorify power series with positive coefficients.