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Math 120: Groups and Rings

In Fall 2015 I taught Math 120 at Stanford University. The course assistant was Niccolò Ronchetti. For questions about the material and class discussions, we used the Math 120 Piazza page.

Material covered:

WIM paper topics:
1) alternating group An is simple for n≥5, or
2) Banach–Tarski paradox.

For alternating group: definition of An is 3.5, definition of simple group is on p102, simplicity of A5 is Theorem 4.3.12, simplicity for general n is 4.6 (there are other proofs, you can use another argument if you like).
Source for Banach–Tarski: Brief exposition by Terry Tao, also sketch of the proof on Wikipedia.


The full syllabus for the course is available here.

Textbook: Dummit and Foote, Abstract Algebra (3rd ed), required.

Further resources: