  We study numerically and analytically the average length of reduced
(primitive) words in so-called locally free and braid groups. We consider the
situations when the letters in the initial words are drawn either without or
with correlations. In the latter case we show that the average length of the
reduced word can be increased or lowered depending on the type of correlation.
The ideas developed are used for analytical computation of the average number
of peaks of the surface appearing in some specific ballistic growth model
