Past exam of the groups and representations course of the University of Oxford 2024 1 b Solution 2026-10-25
Compose permutations from right to left. The three transpositions are , and . In cycle notation, direct composition givesThe complete symmetric group is thereforeConjugation relabels the entries of a cycle, so the conjugacy classes are preciselyTheir sizes are , respectively. The differing orders of group elements also show that these three sets cannot merge under conjugation.