Word length perturbations in certain symmetric presentations of dihedral groups (Q512537)

The authors classify all small symmetric presentations of the dihedral group \(D_n\) (here, ``small'' means a generating set with at most three elements and ``symmetric'' means that the generating set \(S\) contains only nontrivial elements and if \(s\in S\), then \(s^{-1}\in S\)). The length of an element \(g\in D_n\) with respect to such a symmetric generating set \(S\) is simply the minimal number of letters in \(S\) needed to write the word \(g\). Two special integers are defined to measure somehow the effect on the length of the deletion of a letter or the replacement of a letter with another. Exact values for these two special integers are obtained for various symmetric generating sets and general bounds for other symmetric generating sets.