This text, designed for undergraduate mathematics students, provides a gentle introduction to the vocabulary and many of the highlights of elementary group theory. Written in an informal style, the material is divided into short sections, each of which deals with an important result or a new idea. There are more than 300 exercises and approximately 60 illustrations to help develop the student's intuition.

Klappentext

This is a gentle introduction to the vocabulary and many of the highlights of elementary group theory. Written in an informal style, the material is divided into short sections, each of which deals with an important result or a new idea. Includes more than 300 exercises and approximately 60 illustrations.

Inhalt

Preface. 1: Symmetries of the Tetrahedron. 2: Axioms. 3: Numbers. 4: Dihedral Groups. 5: Subgroups and Generators. 6: Permutations. 7: Isomorphisms. 8: Plato's Solids and Cayley's Theorem. 9: Matrix Groups. 10: Products. 11: Lagrange's Theorem. 12: Partitions. 13: Cauchy's Theorem. 14: Conjugacy. 15: Quotient Groups. 16: Homomorphisms. 17: Actions, Orbits, and Stabalizers. 18: Counting Orbits. 19: Finite Rotation Groups. 20: The Sylow Theorems. 21: Finitely Generated Abelian Groups. 22: Row and Column Operations. 23: Automorphisms. 24: The Euclidean Group. 25: Lattices and Point Groups. 26: Wallpaper Patterns. 27: Free Groups and Presentations. 28: Trees and the Nielsen-Schreier Theorem. Bibliography. Index.