What is this "shifted" commutativity called?
There's this property that's sometimes a bit annoying in numbers puzzles. For ⊖ ∈ {-, ÷} on the natural numbers:
a ⊖ b = c iff a ⊖ c = b; ∀a,b,c (1)
It is in a sense a "shifted" commutativity, since commutativity can be expressed as
a ⊕ b = c iff b ⊕ a = c; ∀a,b,c
which is the same as (1) except that the first two elements are switched, not the last two.
I'm sure this property has a common name, but I've never heard it. Can someone tell me what it's called? I've noticed that any operation x ⊖ y = x ⊕ y^(-1) on a commutative group G = (G, ⊕) has this property, if this helps.
Posted Aug 8, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC
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