Math 830 HW 1: Due Monday, September 15

You may work in groups on this assignment, but you must write up all solutions independently
and on your own. You may not consult sources (e.g., textbooks, the internet, math students not
in Math 830, or professors) other than your class notes.
Throughout this homework set G denotes a group.
1. Show that every group of order five or less is abelian.
2. Let G be a group and H ⊆ G a subgroup. For a, b ∈ G, define a ≡l b mod H if and only if
b−1 a ∈ H. Prove that this yields an equivalence relation on G whose equivalence classes are the
distinct left cosets of H in G. Discuss (with proof) the relevance of this to the contruction of Zn ,
the integers modulo n, for n > 0 and also the relevance of this to quotient spaces in linear algebra.
3. Let H be a subgroup of the group G and {gα H}α∈A be the distinct left cosets of H in G. Prove
that H is normal in G if for all α ∈ A, gα H = Hgα .
4. Let N ⊆ G be a normal subgroup. Let (G/N )L denote the group of left cosest of N in G and
(G/N )R denote the group of right cosest of N in G. Either prove that these groups are isomorphic
or give a counter-example showing that these groups are not isomorphic.
5. Let G be a cyclic group. Prove that every subgroup of G is cyclic.
6. Let G be a cyclic group of order n > 1. Prove that for each positive integer d dividing n, there
exists a unique subgroup Hd of order d. Use this fact to draw a diagram illustrating the subgroup
structure of Z24 .
7. Let G be a group and H, K ⊆ G finite subgroups, prove that |HK| = |H|·|K|
|H∩K| . Note that we are
are not requiring that the set HK be a subgroup of G. Discuss the conditions under which HK is
a subgroup.
8. Let G be a group and N ⊆ G a normal subgroup. Prove that there is a 1-1 correspondence be-
tween the subgroups of G containing N and the subgroups of G/N . Prove that this correspondence
takes normal subgroups of G containing N to normal subgroups of G/N .
9. Let G be the so-called quasidihedral group of order 16, i.e., the group with generators σ and τ
and relations σ 8 = τ 2 = e, στ = τ σ 3 . Show : (a) |G| = 16, (b) G has three subgroups of order
8, namely H1 :=< τ, σ 2 >, H2 :=< σ > and H3 :=< σ 2 , στ > and (c) H1 ∼ = D4 , H2 ∼= Z8 and
∼
H3 = Q8 .
10. Consider the abelian group Q/Z. Prove : (a) Every element of Q/Z is a coset of the form
q + Z, with 0 ≤ q < 1, (b) Every element of Q/Z has finite order, but there are elements in Q/Z of
arbitrarily large order and (c) Q/Z is the subgroup of R/Z of elements of finite order.
Bonus. Let G be a finite group and ϕ an automorphism of G (i.e., a group isomorphism from G
to G) sending more than 3/4 of the elements of G to their inverses. Show that ϕ(g) = g −1 for all
g ∈ G. Conclude G is abelian.