Good solutions to 'What's A Group' came from Curt from Reigate
College and Andrei from Tudor Vianu National College, Bucharest,
Romania.
(a) The set of natural numbers with the operation of
subtraction does not form a group because the following properties
of a group are not present:
Closure: If
and
are natural numbers and
, then
is not a natural number.
Associativity:
,
e.g.
.
Identity: 0 is an integer, and
. True (So the
identity
)
Inverses:
. If
is a natural number,
is not a natural number. (Andrei)
(b) Rational numbers with multiplication
A rational number, by definition is expressible as
where
are integers and
. With the operation of
multiplication, the following occurs:
.
Once again, both the numerator and denominator are
integers (also
), hence closure is achieved.
When one investigates division, the following may occur.
Let t=0 (it is a numerator so this integer is allowed)
But now the denominator is equal to 0. Any real number divided by 0
is not defined within the set of rational numbers. Therefore,
condition (1) is contravened; closure is not achieved.
Also division is not associative e.g.
(Curt)
(c) Positive integers with multiplication
I check all the properties of the groups for the set
of positive integers with the operation of multiplication:
Closure: If
and
are positive integers,
then
is also a positive integer. True.
Associativity:
for all
in the set.
True.
Identity: 1 is a positive integer, and
. True
(So the identity e = 1).
Inverses:
. But
is not always an integer.
So, the set of positive integers with the operation of multiplication
does not form a group as it does not contain inverse elements. (Andrei)
(d) The set of all positive even integers with the operation of
multiplication would not form a group because this set does not contain
inverses. But it is noted that no identity exists in this set.
For any real number, the identity element of multiplication is 1.
But 1 is not an even integer, and therefore not a member of
the set of all even integers. This contravenes condition (3). (Curt)
(e) The set of integers with the operation * defined such that
is a group. The identity
, is defined as being an
element such that
or (as all the operations that make up
* are not affected by order)
. Therefore
which implies
and so
.
The inverse element,
, has the property that
an so
, the inverse of
, is given by
(Curt
(f) The set of integers with the operation * defined by
is a group with the following properties:
Closure: If
and
are integers, then
is also an integer. True:
when
is even and
when
is odd.
Associativity:
. True.
Identity:
for all integer
implies
and also
, so the identity element is 0.
Inverses. One must work separately for even and odd elements.
If
is even (
where
is an integer) then
implies
and so
Similarly
which verifies that
the inverse is
. If
is odd then the inverse of
is
.
The inverse of
is given for both cases by
.
(Andrei)
(g)The set of all real numbers excluding only the number -1
together with the operation
is a group. The inverse
is such that
and so
.
Therefore
is the identity.
If
then
and so the inverse of
is given by
(hence
, or else
is not a real number,
which would contravene the properties of the group) (Curt)