Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2004 / iii / Paper 2 / 6 / b / Solution

Represent a subset by the coordinate vector of its indicator function in ${\mathbb{F}}_2^n$. 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 $S_n$ action preserves the bilinear form.

Let $j=(1,\dots ,1)$, the vector representing the full set. Thenis the even-weight subspace. For even $n$, $B(j,j)=n=0$ in ${\mathbb{F}}_2$, so $j\in W$. Moreover $B(x,x)={\sum }_i{x}_i^2={\sum }_i{x}_i=0$ for $x\in W$, making the restricted bilinear form alternating. Nondegeneracy on the ambient space implies $W^{\perp }=⟨j⟩$, so the radical of $B{|}_W$ is exactlyThus it descends to an alternating bilinear form on $W/⟨j⟩$, independent of the representatives, and that quotient form has zero radical. The induced form is nondegenerate, and its dimension is $n-2$. This is the symplectic quotient of the binary subset module; at $n=2$ it is the zero-dimensional nondegenerate space.