[Math] In a Cayley table, which Group axioms fail when an entry appears twice in a row or a column

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In a Cayley table, which Group axioms fail when an entry appears twice in a row or a column?

It's obviously not the Closure axiom, and after some inspection, I believe the Inverses axiom does fail.

However, I'm not so sure how to show whether or not the two other axioms fail (Identity and Associativity).

Best Answer

None of the properties fail automatically

For any group property, you can always find a Cayley table where there's a duplicate entry and yet that property still holds. Here are examples for each:

  1. Associativity can still hold. $$\begin{array}{c|cc} \times& 0 & 1 \\\hline 0 & 0 & 0\\1 & 0 & 1\end{array}$$

  2. Identity can still hold. (Same example.) $$\begin{array}{c|cc} \times& 0 & 1 \\\hline 0 & 0 & 0\\1 & 0 & 1\end{array}$$

  3. Inverses can still hold. (Here, $a$ and $b$ are inverses of each other.)$$\begin{array}{c|ccc} & e & a & b \\\hline e & e & a & b\\a & a & a & e \\b & b & e & a\end{array}$$

However, either associativity fails or inverses fail.

If there's a duplicate row, then $ab=ac$ for some $b\neq c$. Suppose the operator has inverses and associativity. Then we get $a^{-1}ab = a^{-1}ac$ so that $b=c$— contradicting our assumption that $b\neq c$.

So if there's a duplicate row, the operator can either be associative (as shown above), or have inverses (as shown above), but never both.

For confirmation, note that in the example tables above, #1 is associative but not invertible because of 0, and #3 is invertible but not associative because $(bb)a = aa = a$ but $b(ba) = be = b$.)

Diagram

Groups can't have repeat entries. Therefore, if a table has repeat entries, it's not a group. If it's not a group, then it's not in the green region of this diagram. Visually, you can see that such a table can't be both associative and have inverses at the same time. And you can show that there exist tables with duplicate rows that belong to any other non-green region of this diagram.

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