Groups - Prove that every element equals inverse of inverse of element

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This is my first proof about groups. Please feed back and criticise in every way (including style & language). Axiom names (see Wikipedia) are italicised. We use $^{-1}$ to denote inverse elements; $e$ denotes the identity element.


Let $(G, \cdot)$ be a group. By $\textit{identity element}$, $G \ne \emptyset$. Now, let $a \in G$. By $\textit{inverse element}$, $a^{-1} \in G$ and $(a^{-1})^{-1} \in G$. It remains to prove that $(a^{-1})^{-1} = a$. \begin{equation*} \begin{split} a &= a \cdot e && \text{by }\textit{identity element} \\ &= a \cdot \Big(a^{-1} \cdot (a^{-1})^{-1}\Big) && \text{by }\textit{inverse element} \\ &= (a \cdot a^{-1}) \cdot (a^{-1})^{-1} && \text{by }\textit{associativity} \\ &= e \cdot (a^{-1})^{-1} && \text{by }\textit{inverse element} \\ &= (a^{-1})^{-1} && \text{by }\textit{identity element} \end{split} \end{equation*} QED


PS: What I do know is that I have a personal preference for details and explicitness :-(

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First of all, your proof is absolutely fine! There's a more elegant way to prove this fact though. Since inverses are unique in groups, $(a^{-1})^{-1}$ is the unique element of the group satisfying $$ (a^{-1})^{-1} (a^{-1}) = (a^{-1}) (a^{-1})^{-1} = e. $$ On the other hand, we know that $a$ satisfies $$ a (a^{-1}) = (a^{-1}) a = e, $$ so we conclude $a=(a^{-1})^{-1}$ from the uniqueness of inverse elements in a group.