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Diagrams Commutative diagrams for groups |
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Diagrams for groupsYou can present a group in a Cayley-like manner, replacing colors by explicit assignment of nodes to edges: while in a Cayley graph $x \circ y = z$ is presented like this:
you can also present it like this:
Now the group axioms can be stated like this:
and for each $x$ there is a $x^{-1}$ such that $x \circ x^{-1} = x^{-1} \circ x = e$, or: such that the following diagram commutes:
The last diagram is somewhat ugly, even when drawn in this most balanced way (I didn't find a more appealing and symmetric one). But an astonishing symmetry arises, when we consider Abelian groups. Commutativity is expressed by the diagram:
and associativity becomes:
In the presence of commutativity, associativity seems to be related to commutativity (some sort of "second level commutativity").
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