The question comes from considerations in algebra but it's probably more related to combinatorics.
Suppose I have a set of $n$ elements $(a, b, c, ...)$ and a possibly non-associative operation $*$ between these elements.
What I want to do is to count the number of elements I could obtain with this operation without interchanging the order of the elements.
Let me illustrate this. Here below the parentheses mean that the operation has higher priority (usual notation).
- For $a$ and $b$, there is only 1 way to multiply them: $a * b$.
- For $a$, $b$ and $c$, we can have 2: $a*(b*c)$ or $(a*b)*c$.
- For $a$, $b$, $c$ and $d$, there are 5: $(a*b)*(c*d)$, $((a*b)*c)*d$, $(a*(b*c))*d$, $a*((b*c)*d)$ or $a*(b*(c*d))$.
It seems that for $5$ elements we have $14$ possibilities unless I've made a mistake by enumerating them all by hand.
Would anyone have an idea on how many could we obtain for $n$ elements? I fail to detect a pattern here.