Tour:Some variations of group: Difference between revisions

From Groupprops
No edit summary
(No difference)

Revision as of 19:46, 20 June 2008

This page is part of the Groupprops Guided tour for beginners (Jump to beginning of tour)
PREVIOUS: Introduction two |UP: Introduction two (beginners) | NEXT: Equality of left and right neutral element

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO: Read, and understand, all the definitions presented below. These involve variations on the notion of group.

  • Magma: A magma is a set S with a binary operation *:S×SS. There is no condition of associativity, there is no requirement that an identity element exist, and there is no condition for inverses of any kind to exist.
  • Semigroup: This is a magma where the associativity condition is satisfied. For any a,b,cS, we have a*(b*c)=(a*b)*c
  • Neutral element: An element eS is termed left neutral if e*a=a for all a, right neutral if a*e=a for all a. e is termed neutral if it is both left and right neutral. A neutral element is also termed an identity element.
  • Monoid: A monoid is a semigroup with a neutral element.
  • Cancellative element: An element aS is termed left cancellative if a*b=a*cb=c. Similarly aS is termed right cancellative if b*a=c*ab=c. An element is termed cancellative if it is both left and right cancellative.
  • Invertible element: In a magma with neutral element e, an element a is said to be left invertible if there exists b such that b*a=e, and right invertible if there exists c such that a*c=e. If there exists a b such that a*b=b*a=e, the element is termed right invertible.
  • Group: A group is a monoid where every element is invertible.