A word for the meaning of "over-constrained"
I want to express that I constrained something too much such that it is contradictory now. At first sight, over-constrained seems to fit, but I am not sure whether it is fine to use in a scientific publication. Can you help me?
I've seen over-constrained used several times in scientific publications, referring to a system constrained to such a point that a solution does not exist. So I think you're fine.
(As an example, there's a paper entitled "A brief overview of over-constrained systems" by Michael Jampel published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science. See it here)
I have never used this word, but I think that “overconstrained” (for a system of equations) is used in two slightly different meanings:
- There are more constraints than the degree of freedom.
- There are more constraints than the degree of freedom and there are no solutions because of that.
For example, we can call a system of linear equations with 10 variables and 11 equations “overconstrained” in the sense 1, but it may have a solution if some of the equations are redundant. If you need a precise meaning, I think that you should define the meaning which you intend.