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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2011
It was proved by Howie in 1966 that , the semigroup of all singular mappings of a finite set X into itself, is generated by its idempotents. Implicit in the method of proof, though not formally stated, is the result that if |X| = n then the n(n – 1) idempotents whose range has cardinal n – 1 form a generating set for. Here it is shown that if n ≧ 3 then a minimal set M of idempotent generators for
contains ½n(n–1) members. A formula is given for the number of distinct sets M.