In mathematics, a hierarchy is a preorder, i.e. an ordered set. The term is used to stress a natural hierarchical relation among the elements. In particular, it is the preferred terminology for posets whose elements are classes of objects of increasing complexity. In that case, the preorder defining the hierarchy is the class-containment relation. Containment hierarchies are thus special cases of hierarchies.

Example
In theoretical computer science, the time hierarchy is a classification of decision problems according to the amount of time required to solve them.