Related papers: A note on the probability of a groupoid having def…

Let $\mathfrak C$ be a class of finite groups which is closed for subgroups, quotients and direct products. Given a profinite group $G$ and an element $x\in G$, we denote by $P_{\mathfrak{C}}(x,G)$ the probability that $x$ and a randomly…

We record a folklore theorem that says a partial group embeds in a group if and only if each word has at most one possible multiplication, regardless of choice of parenthesization. We further investigate the partial groups which are…

Let A be a subset of an abelian group G. We say that A is sum-free if there do not exist x,y and z in A satisfying x + y = z. We determine, for any G, the cardinality of the largest sum-free subset of G. This equals c(G)|G| where c(G) is a…

A group $G$ is said to be $\frac{3}{2}$-generated if every nontrivial element belongs to a generating pair. It is easy to see that if $G$ has this property then every proper quotient of $G$ is cyclic. In this paper we prove that the…

A group element is called a generalized torsion if a finite product of its conjugates is equal to the identity. We prove that in a nilpotent or FC-group, the generalized torsion elements are all torsion elements. Moreover, we compute the…

For a finite set of non-zero natural numbers that contains at least one element different from 1 and the least common multiple of any of its subsets, there exists a subset of at least half of its members which has a common divisor larger…

Let L be the zero set of a nonconstant monic polynomial with complex coefficients. In the context of constructive mathematics without countable choice, it may not be possible to construct an element of L. In this paper we introduce a notion…

What is the probability for a number field of composite degree $d$ to have a nontrivial subfield? As the reader might expect the answer heavily depends on the interpretation of probability. We show that if the fields are enumerated by the…

We use probabilistic methods to prove that many Coxeter groups are incoherent. In particular, this holds for Coxeter groups of uniform exponent > 2 with sufficiently many generators.

In this paper, we study the proportion of vanishing elements of finite groups. We show that the proportion of vanishing elements of every finite non-abelian group is bounded below by $1/2$ and classify all finite groups whose proportions of…

Let $G$ be a simple algebraic group of exceptional type over an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p > 0$. This paper continues a long-standing effort to classify the connected reductive subgroups of $G$. Having previously…

Famously, every finite simple group $G$ can be generated by a pair of elements. Moreover, Liebeck and Shalev (1995) proved that the probability that a pair of elements generate $G$ tends to $1$ as $|G| \to \infty$. More generally, work of…

For subsets X,Y of a finite group G, we write Pr(X,Y) for the probability that two random elements x in X and y in Y commute. This paper addresses the relation between the structure of an approximate subgroup A of G and the probabilities…

In this paper, we extend recent results about the distribution of even and odd gaps of a numerical semigroup. We find that, for any numerical semigroup, the distribution can be computed in terms of the numbers of or the sums of odd and even…

Group testing is the process of pooling arbitrary subsets from a set of $n$ items so as to identify, with a minimal number of tests, a "small" subset of $d$ defective items. In "classical" non-adaptive group testing, it is known that when…

An "element-free" probability distribution is what remains of a probability distribution after we forget the elements to which the probabilities were assigned. These objects naturally arise in Bayesian statistics, in situations where…

A natural operation on numerical semigroups is taking a quotient by a positive integer. If $\mathcal S$ is a quotient of a numerical semigroup with $k$ generators, we call $\mathcal S$ a $k$-quotient. We give a necessary condition for a…

Babai and S\'os have asked whether there exists a constant c>0 such that every finite group G has a product-free subset of size at least c|G|: that is, a subset X that does not contain three elements x, y and z with xy=z. In this paper we…

Let $A$ be a finite, nonempty subset of an abelian group. We show that if every element of $A$ is a sum of two other elements, then $A$ has a nonempty zero-sum subset. That is, a (finite, nonempty) sum-full subset of an abelian group is not…

Group testing is concerned with identifying $t$ defective items in a set of $m$ items, where each test reports whether a specific subset of items contains at least one defective. In non-adaptive group testing, the subsets to be tested are…