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Department of Mathematics,
University of California San Diego

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Math 269 - Combinatorics

Jia Huang

University of Nebraska at Kearney

Nonassociativity of some binary operations

Abstract:

Let $*$ be a binary operation on a set $X$ and let $x_0,x_1,\ldots,x_n$ be $X$-valued indeterminate. Define two parenthesizations of $x_0*x_1*\cdots*x_n$ to be equivalent if they give the same function from $X^{n+1}$ to $X$. Under this equivalence relation, we study the number $C_{*,n}$ of equivalence classes and the largest size $\widetilde C_{*,n}$ of an equivalence class. We have $1\le C_{*,n}\le C_n$ and $1\le \widetilde C_{*,n}\le C_n$, where $C_n := \frac{1}{n+1}{2n\choose n}$ is the ubiquitous Catalan number. Moreover, $C_{*,n}=1 \Leftrightarrow$ $*$ is associative $\Leftrightarrow \widetilde C_{*,n}=C_n$. Thus $C_{*,n}$ and $\widetilde C_{*,n}$ measure how far the operation $*$ is away from being associative. In this talk we will present various results on the nonassociativity measurements $C_{*,n}$ and $\widetilde C_{*,n}$, and show their connections to many known combinatorial results, assuming $*$ satisfies some multiparameter generalizations of associativity.

Host: Brendon Rhoades

June 1, 2017

5:00 PM

AP&M 6402

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