General Notes

Tuesday, 1 March 2022 7:13 am

• A bijection is a mapping/function that is both surjective and onto

• A bijection on a set is a mapping from to
• More than one mapping can be possible for a set
• The set of all possible mappings on is written as or or
• If the elements of a group are functions then the operation is
composition
• is a group
○ Closure: a bijection composed with a bijection is a bijection. is 1-1
and onto, is 1-1 and onto
○ Associativity: function composition is always associative
○ Identity: this is also a function
○ Inverse: all bijections have inverses and since the bijection is on
then it is in
○ Note: not generally commutative, only and

• When is a finite non-empty set, then the bijections on are simply

permutations of the elements
○ The number of possible permutations is given by
○ If then we write , as
○ Eg is the set of all possible bijection on set X where
○ The order of a symmetric group,

Symmetric groups Page 1

Permutations
Friday, 1 April 2022 7:30 pm

A permutation is a function that takes one set of

elements and rearranges them.

Can be written as:

is an element of
The order of a permutation is the number of time it
must be composed with itself to give

Symmetric groups Page 2

Inverse of a permutation
Friday, 1 April 2022 10:35 pm

The inverse is found by reversing the layers.

Read it from the bottom up:

Symmetric groups Page 3

Cycles
Tuesday, 1 March 2022 10:17 am • If is an -cycle in then
○ If then all the elements of are in the
Let be a sequence such that cycle, no maps to itself
and let be a ○ If then some elements are mapped to
permutation defined by: themselves
▪ If , then
▪ No matter what power the permutation is
… raise to, will always map to itself.

○ Disjoint cycles are commutative, the order

doesn't matter,
This is a cycle of length and we denote it by Since they are commutative,
( ) if

○ Since disjoint, the cycles have no effect on each

Every permutation can be written as the product of
other
cycles (joint or disjoint)

Symmetric groups Page 4

Order of a cycle
Saturday, 2 April 2022 1:16 am

Order:
If , then
If is an -cycle in then Therefore,

If is the product of disjoint cycles, then the order of

the permutation, is the of the order of its
The order m :
disjoint cycles. This will give the identity permutation
...
Order of a group is the number of elements in the set
Order of an element is the smallest possible integer it where are disjoint cycles
needs to be raised to in order to get

The order of a permutation, is the of the

orders of its disjoint cycles

Symmetric groups Page 5

Inverse of a cycle
Friday, 1 April 2022 10:18 pm

Inverses:

The inverse of a cycle ( ) is given by

( )

(Keep the first term in the cycle fixed and reverse the
others, starting with the last, then second to last…)

The inverse of a 2-cycle is itself

Symmetric groups Page 6

Multiplying cycles
Saturday, 2 April 2022 2:12 am

1. Start with lowest number

2. Continue until is returns to the first term
and then close the cycle.
3. Start new cycle, and continue until the
cycle closes.
4. Repeat

Symmetric groups Page 7

Transpositions
Tuesday, 1 March 2022 2:21 pm

A transposition is a 2-cycle eg(23)

Every permutation can be written as a product of disjoint cycles.

It can also be written as a product of transpositions. A transposition is
a two cycles.

Any transposition paired with itself will give the identity since every
transposition is its own inverse and
The order of every transposition is 2

Permutation product disjoint cycles each cycle goes to product of

transpositions

Cycle to transposition:
( ) ( )( )( ).…( )( )
For an -cycle, there will be transpositions

A permutation is even if it can be written as an even number of

transpositions.

If is an even number, is odd, and the

permutation is odd

An -cycle is even if is odd

An -cycle is odd if is even

Symmetric groups Page 8

Alternation Group
Tuesday, 1 March 2022 2:45 pm

Parity: whether a permutation is even or odd

Write a permutation as a product of transpositions.

If it gives an even number of transpositions -> permutation is even
If it gives an odd number of transpositions -> permutation is odd

The set of all even permutations forms a subgroup of

Symmetric groups Page 9

Shape Symmetries
Tuesday, 1 March 2022 3:46 pm

A symmetry of a geometrical figure is a rearrangement of the

figure that preserves the arrangement of vertices, sides,
distances and angles, ie, the shape is the same.

• Number the vertices

• Find the permutations that keep the shape
• If one rotation is anti-clockwise, make the others anti
clockwise

The symmetries of a figure always form a group.

Triangles:
Scalene: {e}
Isosceles: {e, (2,3)}
Equilateral:

Rectangle:
{e, (12)(34), (14)(23), (13)(24)}
A Klein 4-group
The only non-cyclic group of order 4
Multiplication of any 2 non- elements gives the 3rd element
They are also self inverses

Symmetric groups Page 10