Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2004/iii/paper-2/6/b/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 2 6 b Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Represent a subset by the coordinate vector of its indicator function in . Symmetric difference then becomes coordinatewise addition, and the proposed pairing is the dot productIt is a symmetric bilinear form, and it is nondegenerate because its Gram matrix in the singleton basis is the identity. Coordinate permutations preserve the sum, so the natural action preserves the bilinear form.
Let , the vector representing the full set. Thenis the even-weight subspace. For even , in , so . Moreover for , making the restricted bilinear form alternating. Nondegeneracy on the ambient space implies , so the radical of is exactlyThus it descends to an alternating bilinear form on , independent of the representatives, and that quotient form has zero radical. The induced form is nondegenerate, and its dimension is . This is the symplectic quotient of the binary subset module; at it is the zero-dimensional nondegenerate space.
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