Hyperstructures associated with binary relations (Q2494710)

Given a binary relation \(R\) on a non-empty set \(H\), a hyperoperation \(\odot_R\) is defined on \(H \times H\) by \(x \odot_R y = \{z \in H \mid xRz, zRy\}\). \((H,\odot_R) \) is a hypergroupoid \(\Leftrightarrow R \circ R = H \times H\) [\textit{P. Corsini}, ``Binary relations and hypergroupoids'', Ital. J. Pure Appl. Math. 7, 11--18 (2000; Zbl 0972.20042)]. This paper studies the set of all hypergroupoids \((H,\odot_R) \) associated with binary relations \(R\) on a finite set \(H\). A sample result: If \(R_1\) and \(R_2\) are relations on \(H\) and one of \((H,\odot_{R_1}) \), \((H,\odot_{R_2}) \) is a hypergroupoid, then \((H,\odot_{R_1 \cup R_2}) \) is also a hypergroupoid. Using a Visual Basic program on the Boolean matrix \(M(R)\) associated with the relation \(R\), the authors compute the number of relations \(R\) on \(H\) such that \((H,\odot_R) \) is a hypergroupoid, when \(H\) is a set with 2 (resp. 3, 4).