Given an identity in max,plus arithmetic, are there ways to turn it into an ordinary algebraic identity it other than by replacing addition by multiplication and replacing max by series-plus or by parallel-plus, where the series sum of $x$ and $y$ is $x+y$ and the parallel sum is $xy/(x+y)$? (See the related posts http://mathoverflow.net/questions/136471/choosing-between-the-two-ways-to-tropicalize and http://mathoverflow.net/questions/135204/name-and-notation-for-a-binary-operation/.) As a related question, I ask: What are all the two-variable homogeneous rational functions over $\mathbb{C}$ such that $r(x,y)=r(y,x)$ and $r(r(x,y),z)=r(x,r(y,z))$? (Here I intend equality in the formal sense; e.g., I call $x/x$ the same rational function as 1, even though as functions they are not the same, since $x/x$ is not defined at 0.) The only examples I know of are $r(x,y) = c$ (with $c$ an arbitrary constant), $r(x,y)=x+y$, $r(x,y)=xy/(x+y)$, and $r(x,y)=xy$, but I suspect that there are others I'm overlooking. Perhaps the theory of formal groups has an answer for me, but from what little I've seen, homogeneity does not play a role there. See the related post http://mathoverflow.net/questions/139215/commutative-associative-rational-binary-operations. Now that I've played a bit with operations like $(x+y)/(1-xy)$ (thanks, Alexandre Eremenko!), I'm suspecting that I should be limiting myself to homogeneous operations. (Note: The original version of the post used the word "detropicalize'' in a non-standard and unclear way, so I've changed the title of the post and the wording of the first paragraph accordingly. Thanks, John Mangual!)