Description
This free OpenLearn course, Group theory, is an extract from the Open University course M303 Further pure mathematics, a third level course that introduces important topics in the theory of pure mathematics including: number theory; the algebraic theory of rings and fields; and metric spaces. Students studying M303 develop their understanding of group theory and real analysis and see how some of the ideas are applied to cryptography and fractals.
Group theory consists of material from M303 Book B, Chapters 6 and 7 and has three sections in total. You should set aside about five hours to study each of the sections. The whole extract should take about 16 hours to study. The extract is a small part (around 4%) of a large course that is studied over eight months, and so can give only an approximate indication of the level and content of the full course.
The aim of this extract is to consolidate and build on the group theory presented at Open University level 2 of the curriculum in pure mathematics. It includes lots of problems and while studying you should always have pencil and paper at hand. It is relatively self-contained and should be reasonably easy to understand for someone with a sound knowledge of pure mathematics, such as could be gained from studying the Open University course M208 Pure mathematics. A few techniques and definitions are present in the extract without explanation.
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