If G, H and B are groups such that G × B ≃ H × B, G/[G, G]. Z(G) is free abelian and B is finitely generated abelian, then G ≃ H. The equivalence classes of triples (Vξ,A) where Vand A are finitely generated free abelian groups and ξ: V⊗ V → A is a bilinear form constitute a semigroup B undera natural external orthogonal sum. This semigroup B is cancellative. A cancellation theorem for class 2 nilpotent groups is deduced.

R. Paré and W. Schelter (1978) have extended the Cayley-Hamilton theorem by showing that for each n<1 there is an integer k such that all n x n matrices over any (possibly noncommutative) ring satisfy a monic polynomial of degree k. We give a lower bound for this degree, namely π(n), which is defined as the shortest possible length of a sequence with entries from {1, 2, …, n}.

The Moore-Penrose inverse of a general bordered matrix is found under various conditions. The Moore-Penrose inverses obtained by Hall and Hartwig (1976) are shown to be special cases of these more general results.

A link between norms from quadratic fields and —det (AB−BA) for 2 × 2 matrices is reformulated via central polynomials and thereby generalized.