Cancellative element

This article defines a property of elements or tuples of elements with respect to a binary operation

Definition

An element $a$ in a set $S$ with binary operation $*$ is termed:

• left cancellative if whenever $a*b=a*c$, $b=c$
• right cancellative if whenever $b*a=c*a$, $b=c$
• cancellative if it is both left and right cancellative

Relation with other properties

Stronger properties

• Invertible element: Any left invertible element is right cancellative, any right invertible element is left cancellative. Thus, any invertible element is cancellative.