14-1100/Homework Assignment 2

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Bad news. This assignment is due at class time on Thursday, October 16, 2010.

Good news. It will be marked by the following day, Friday October 17, and be available for pickup at my office between 2-4PM, providing you timely feedback for the term test on the following Monday.

Solve the following problems

(but submit only your solutions of problems 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, and 11).

Problem 1. (Selick)

  1. What it the least integer for which the symmetric group contains an element of order 18?
  2. What is the maximal order of an element in ? (That is, of a shuffling of the red cards within a deck of cards?)

Problem 2. (Selick) Let be a subgroup of index 2 in a group . Show that is normal in .

Problem 3. Let be a permutation whose cycle decomposition consists of one 5-cycle, two 3-cycles, and one 2-cycle. What is the order of the centralizer of ?

Problem 4. (Selick) Let be a group of odd order. Show that is not conjugate to unless .

Problem 5. (Dummit and Foote) Show that if is cyclic then is Abelian.

Problem 6. (Lang) Prove that if the group of automorphisms of a group is cyclic, then is Abelian.

Problem 7. (Lang)

  1. Let be a group and let be a subgroup of finite index. Prove that there is a normal subgroup of , contained in , so that is also finite. (Hint: Let and find a morphism whose kernel is contained in .)
  2. Let be a group and and be subgroups of . Suppose and . Show that

Problem 8. (Selick) Show that any group of order 56 has a normal Sylow- subgroup, for some prime dividing 56.

Problem 9. (Qualifying exam, May 1997) Let act on by permuting the factors, and let be the semi-direct product of and .

  1. What is the order of ?
  2. How many Sylow-5 subgroups does have? Write down one of them.

Problem 10. (Selick) Show that the group of unit quaternions (, subject to and ) is not a semi-direct product of two of its proper subgroups.

Problem 11. (Qualifying exam, September 2008) Let be a finite group and be a prime. Show that if is a -subgroup of , then is congruent to mod . You may wish to study the action of on by multiplication on the left.