How to find if neutral/idnty element exists for 16 different binary operations of *?
Suppose I'm given an operation
on a set
such that the operation between two elements of set
is also an element of set 
Now there are
possible binary operations of
on set
.
If I'm asked to find if there exists a neutral/identity element of a certain table where 
are defined, how do I figure that out?
What I mean is suppose 1 of 16 table of operations looks like this:
 & a \\ \hline (a * b) & b \\ \hline (b * a) & a \\ \hline (b * b) & b \\ \hline \end{array} )
How do I figure out if an identity element exist for this table? Also is it possible to find the identity/neutral element from this table?
Re: How to find if neutral/idnty element exists for 16 different binary operations of
That binary operation does not have an identity. The definition of identity is "e is an identity for operation "*" if and only if e*x= x*e= x for every x in in the set". Here, a*b= b but
so a is NOT an identity. Similarly, b*a= a but
so b is not an identity.
Re: How to find if neutral/idnty element exists for 16 different binary operations of