Schaum's Outline of Group Theory

Great reference for all maths and physics students.

Studying a OU course I found it helpful to see another way of looking describing and exampling the points in this area of math.

I ordered this book to help me when I was struggling with a Group Theory course in the third year of university. All I can say is that this book is a lifesaver. Everything is presented clearly and it takes you right from the foundations to the stuff you need to pass your degree. I particularly liked the section on Sylow's Theorems, the examples were very helpful and it was refreshing to read some examples different to those that the lecturer had given. Would recommend, even for the luxury of having the index so you can flick through and decode your notes quickly.

I bought this to supplement an OU course. The basic ideas are well explained and supported with loads of examples.

Excellent

lots of interesting example though skimming through appears that north american terminology in the book slightly different from the english in some places.

This book follows the format of most of the other books in the Schaum's outline series; it's very direct and to the point and covers a good range of undergraduate Group Theory. Personally I'd not be able to learn everything just from reading the book (but that is, partly, down to the sometimes dry nature of Group Theory), but in conjunction with lectures it makes a good reference text.There are plenty of exercises to keep anyone busy for a long time!

If you are thinking of buying this book to help you with your OU course - don't! I gave one star, but the book doesn't deserve it.This book uses a style of notation that is hard to follow. In particular, functions are placed the 'wrong' way round. In other words, the argument to a function is written *before* the function. This is contrary to all other books I have seen on Group Theory; in fact, contrary to all the mathematics books I have seen.An example: If you have done trigonometry, you would be familiar with writing "sin(x)" as the function "sin" operating on the argument "x". But this book would write this as "x sin", but with "sin" written as a subscript.If you want to practice reading gobbledy-gook maths, this may be the book for you. If so, you will need a magnifying glass to read the superscripts on the subscripts. A pack of paracetamol would help, too.I forgot the groupoids and semigroups. These are rarely mentioned in other texts, and are quickly left behind, but if you want to understand this Schaum book, you will have no choice but to become familiar with them. If you are struggling now, I guarantee you that this book will *not* make life easier for you.If you want a decent book on group theory, consider "A Course in Group Theory" by Humphreys.

Recebi hoje. Capa e páginas/impressão são excelentes.

Like most Schaum books, this is an excellent collection of solved and unsolved problems, that are very useful for both students and teachers alike. In particular, this book contains a chapter on permutational representations, which looks very useful to me.

Very very useful.

Très bon livre pour entrer dans les arcanes de Lagrange, Galois, etc. Ce livre permet une lente introduction sur les groupes, mais permet surtout de comprendre la quintessence de cette partie passionnante des mathématiques.

I had been studying group theory on my own independently using this book for the last seven months when I misplaced it while at work - along with the notebook which I had painstakingly and carefully created from my hundreds of hours of study in this book. To say the least, I've been absolutely devastated at losing my notes; but the Schaum Outline I can easily replace.I had thought, after the book was lost, of trying another text. But most of the introductory textbooks on abstract algebra cover a lot of other things besides group theory. And as a result, they do not go very deeply into any one algebraic structure, but just scratch the surface. I want to focus on groups because this will bring me into the advanced areas of more quickly as a result of the narrowness of focus.The notation in this book is initially peculiar. I was not used to seeing the notation xf for a function instead of f(x). The lack of parentheses was confusing, so when making my notes I simply added them, creating the notation (x)f. In fact this backward notation does seem to work better for abstract algebra, and after a while it becomes natural, and the standard notation f(x) becomes odd. So expect to see such things as this for automorphisms: (a*b)f = (a)f*(b)f.Another problem with the book that I've encountered is a number of typos. They are few but still enough to cause some real confusion. The first four chapters are, in my opinion, outstanding. As the author states, chapters 5-8 cover a variety of intermediate-level topics and can be studied in any order whatsoever. Going into chapter 5, I encountered an increasing difficulty understanding this text just prior to presenting proofs of the Sylow theorems. In particular, I did not feel that conjugacy classes were very well presented. On the plus side, however, there is a thorough coverage of cyclic and finite groups, and a strong emphasis throughout the text on proving the various theorems and lemmas.