Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/paper-2/8/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2019 Paper 2 8 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
A group is a set equipped with a binary operation satisfying the group axioms: closure; associativity, ; an identity element with ; and an inverse element for every , with .
A subgroup is a subset that is a group under the restricted operation. Equivalently, it is nonempty and contains whenever . A generating set of a group is a set whose elements and inverses can be multiplied in finite words to produce every group element.
The group order is its number of elements, . The order of a group element is the least positive integer with , or infinity if there is none. Lagrange's theorem states that for a finite group and subgroup , divides and . In particular, every finite element order divides the group order.
A cyclic group is generated by one element, so every element is a power of that generator. A group isomorphism is a bijective group homomorphism: a bijection satisfying for all .
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