An Latin square is given. We are allowed to do the following operation on an table. We can choose a cell in the square and add the same integer to the number of all the cells in the union of the row and the column of the chosen cell. Prove that one can do a finite number of such operations to reach every Latin square. (Note that the square after some initial steps need not to be a Latin square, and we can do the operation on each cell more than once.)
Solution
Denote the number of cell in the square by . For , with and , we define the operation in this way: Add to all the cells in the union of row and column of cell , add to all the cells in the union of row and column of cell , add to all the cells in the union of row and column of cell , and finally add to all the cells in the union of row and column of cell .
After this operation, will increase by , will decrease by and all the other cells remain the same.
For two squares and we define
We want to use the above operation to replace the Latin square by some other square such that if we can do this by repeating this operation we can transform to .
Because the sum of the numbers in each row and column in and are the same, there should be two integer numbers so that and two integer numbers so that . Now if we do the operation on to obtain then and the sum of numbers in each row and column of does not change. So we can reach by repeating this process. ■