MTH714U/MTHM024
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Group theory
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| Course Material |
Autumn 2009 |
News
- 18/12/09:Solutions to exercises 5 now available from the link below.
- 18/12/09:Last year's exam available from the link below.
- 17/12/09:Change to the exam rubric: instead of having to answer all four questions (as last year),
you will have a choice of FOUR questions out of FIVE.
- 17/12/09:Solutions to exercises 4 are available from the link below.
- 08/12/09:Revised notes, giving more detail, are available below. (Updated 17/12/09.)
- 07/12/09:Extended notes, based on notes taken during last year's
lectures, are available below. They are a bit rough in places, and have not been proof-read,
so use with care, and let me know of any errors you find.
- 06/12/09:Exercises 5 now available
from the link below.
- 26/11/09:Solutions to Exercises 3 are now available from the link below.
- 26/11/09:Extra tutorial on 1st December (2pm, 513), due to popular demand.
- 19/11/09:Exercises 4, and Solutions to Exercises 2, are available from the
links below.
- 04/11/09:There will be no lecture in reading week, i.e. on November 12th.
- 04/11/09:Exercises 3, and Solutions to Exercises 1, are available from the
links below.
- 27/10/09:Note that the lecture on Thursday 29th October is in room 410, not 203.
- 22/10/09:Exercise sheet 2 is now available from the link below.
- 22/10/09:The tutorial on 27th October will be in room 410.
- 08/10/09:Exercise sheet 1 is now available from the link below.
- 08/10/09:Tutorials will be held as necessary on Tuesdays at 2pm in room 513 (TBC),
starting on 13th October.
- 30/09/09:The lectures have now been fixed at 1-3pm Thursday in room 203.
- 10/08/09:Course information in preparation.
Link
to last year's pages for back-up.
Administrative information
- Lectures:
The lectures have now been fixed at 1-3pm Thursday in room 203. (In room 410 on 29th October.)
- Tutorials on Tuesdays at 2pm in room 513: 13th October, 27th October
(in room 410), 24th November, 8th December
- Lecturer: Professor Robert Wilson, Room G51. For office hours, see my homepage.
Course descriptions and course information
-
Course
Description from the Maths UG Handbook: this is the link for MTH714U, which has been
recently updated; the link for MTHM024 is out of date and should not be used.
- New sample
exam paper: EXAM PROCEDURES CHANGED LAST YEAR: ALL QUESTIONS ON THE PAPER SHOULD BE ANSWERED.
Due to popular demand, this change has been revoked: the 2010 exam will have FIVE questions, and you should answer
FOUR of them.
- The 2008 exam paper
- The 2009 exam paper
Exam papers before 2008 were set on a completely different syllabus, so are not a good guide
as to what to expect. Nevertheless, a few of the questions may be of some use for practice.
Notes
These notes are summaries only, and are not a substitute for taking your own notes in lectures.
- Notes
1: Introduction and revision: the theorems of Sylow and Jordan-Hölder.
- Notes
2: Permutation groups and Iwasawa's Lemma.
- Notes
3: Introduction to linear groups.
Extended notes
based on notes taken during last year's lectures.
More detailed notes (2nd draft, 17/12/09)
based on this year's lectures.
Coursework
The exercises below are intended to help you to learn the material in this course.
If you want to hand in your solutions, I will mark them to provide you with feedback.
Solutions to coursework questions are provided here,
so that you can use them at your own pace and in your own preferred way. You are
strongly advised NOT to use the solutions until you have made a serious attempt
at the questions on your own.
Other course material
The recommended course text is
J.L. Alperin and R.W. Bell, Groups and Representations. Springer (1995).
Chapters 1 to 4 cover most (but not all) of what is in the course, plus a little
extra, including the required background from Algebraic Structures II.
Web Resources
Further reading
Robert A. Wilson
Created 19 September 2007
Updated 18 December 2009