Alphabeta Math
PropositionStatement: Literature-sourcedProof: AI-adaptedSession-authored (Fable 5 assisted)precheck passaudited 2026-08-26
How statement and proof provenance work

The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.

  • Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
  • AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
  • AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.

These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.

Balls of a word metric are finite if and only if the generating set is finite

Statement

Balls of a word metric are finite if and only if the generating set is finite.

Facts & Assumptions

Given: The hypotheses of the Statement.

[F1]

The word metric of G with respect to S is dS(g,h)=g1hS (The word metric of a group with respect to a generating set).

[L1]

The word length gS is the least n such that g is a product of n elements of SS1 (Word length of a group element with respect to a generating set).

[L2]

The word metric is a left-invariant metric and coincides with the path metric of the Cayley graph (The word metric is a left-invariant metric and coincides with the path metric of the Cayley graph).

[L3]

In a locally finite connected graph every ball of the path metric is finite (In a connected locally finite graph every ball of the path metric is finite).

[L4]

Every vertex of a Cayley graph has the same degree, and the graph is locally finite exactly when the symmetrised generating set is finite (Cayley-graph neighbourhoods are equipotent, and local finiteness is equivalent to finiteness of the symmetrised subset).

[L5]

B(x,r) is the open ball, Bˉ(x,r) the closed ball and S(x,r) the sphere of centre x and radius r. The radius is always a strictly positive real; a ball of radius 0 or of negative radius is never written in this library. (Open ball, closed ball and sphere in a metric space).

[L6]

A set A is finite when An for some nN. (The cardinality A of a finite set).

[L7]

A group is finitely generated when some finite subset generates it (Finitely generated groups).

[L8]

Write i<mAi:={f:f is a function with domain m and f(i)Ai for every i<m}. Then i<mAi is finite and i<mAi=i<mAi, the right-hand product being the N-valued one of. (The product rule: A×B=AB, and i<mAi=i<mAi).

Proof

technique · direct
1.1

If S is finite the Cayley graph is locally finite, so balls of its path metric are finite; left invariance moves this to every centre.

F1L1L2L3L4L5L6L7L8
2.1

If S is infinite then the open ball of radius 2 about the identity contains every element of SS1, because each such element has word length 1; so that ball is infinite.

F1L1L4L5L6step 1.1

Depends on

Used by

Dependency tree · two levels

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Sources