Week 4: October 3-7, 2016

  • Course Change Date: Monday, October 3, is the last day to change from MAT240 to MAT223 without `academic penalty'. Click this link for information on how to change.
  • Required reading: Sections 1.5, 1.6.

    By the way, the `required readings' really are `required'. In particular, some assignment problems may rely on material from those sections, even if it wasn't covered in the lecture.

  • Assignment #3 has been posted, and is due on Friday, October 7. Please send me an email, in case you did not receive the Crowdmark email. Solutions to #2 have been posted on Blackboard.

    Some recent FAQ's regarding the Crowdmark assignments:

  • Additional homework (do not hand in).
  • % From now on, we'll make use of the following notations: If $A,B$ are sets, we denote $$ A\backslash B = \{x\in A|\ \ x\not\in B\}.$$ The symbol $\# A$ will denote the cardinality of $A$, that is, the number of elements in $A$. For instance, some subsets of $\mathbb{R}$: $$\# \emptyset =0,\ \ \#\{0\}=1,\ \ \#\mathbb{Z}=\infty,\ \ \ \#\{-1,1\}=2.$$
  • (Note that in $\mathbb{Z}_2$, we would have $\#\{-1,1\}=1$, because $1=-1$ in the field $\mathbb{Z}_2$ -- and repetitions don't matter if one enumerates elements of a set.)

  • Just for fun: A famous linear algebra puzzle: In a town with $n$ inhabitants, there are $N$ clubs. Each club has an odd number of members, and for any two distinct clubs there is an even number of common members. Prove that $n\ge N$. Hint: Work with the field $\mathbb{Z}_2$, and use facts about bases and dimension. Solution.