Abstract algebra. An inquiry-based approach (Q2865992)

This book arose from the authors' approach to teaching abstract algebra. They place an emphasis on active learning and on developing students' intuition through their investigation of examples. As the authors say, they try to ``introduce carefully the ideas behind definitions and theorems in order to help students develop intuition and understand the logic behind them''; they ``expect students to experiment through examples, makes conjectures, and then refine or prove their conjectures''; they hope to ``help students develop their communication skills in mathematics''. The paper is organized into four large parts and the text is formatted into investigations, each of which contains preview activities, in-class activities, concluding activities, exercises and connections. The first part includes Chapters I--II and investigates the most important class of numbers- the integers- and then the others classes-the real, the rational and the complex numbers. In this chapter, we can find the most important things about the divisibility of integers: the greatest common divisors, the Euclidean algorithm, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, the congruences classes or the integers modulo \(n\).NEWLINENEWLINEThe second part (Chapters III--V) presents the ring theory, containing basic properties of rings and subrings, homomorphisms, isomorphisms, invariants, direct sums, polynomial rings, ideal, quotient ring, divisibility, and factorizations in integral domains. In the final of this part, the authors present the Peano axioms and the construction of the sets \(\mathbb{Q},\mathbb{R}\) and \(\mathbb{C}\).NEWLINENEWLINEThe third part, Chapter VI, is dedicated to group theory. The authors introduce groups with symmetries of planar objects and then the basic topics (groups, subgroups, cyclic groups, dihedral and symmetric groups, Lagrange's theorem, normal subgroups and quotient groups, group isomorphisms and homomorphisms, the fundamental theorem of finite abelian groups and the Sylow theorems).NEWLINENEWLINEThe book concludes with several supplemental investigations in a Special topics section. Here applications of abstract algebra or investigations into additional topics in abstract algebra are presented (which require knowledge of material from ring theory and group theory) such as: the RSA algorithm, check digits, games (NIM and the 15 puzzle), finite fields, splitting fields, groups of order 8 and 12, or semidirect products of groups.NEWLINENEWLINEAs a conclusion, this book is not another material about abstract algebra, ``but also provide a deeper understanding of what mathematics is, how it is done, and how mathematicians think''. The text is organized in such a way that it is possible to begin with either rings or groups.