Saturday, June 03, 2006

A coset of a subgroup has the same order as the subgroup.

This one is just for practice at constructing a proof. The result is trivial.

Consider a finite subgroup H of G with order n. Then
  • H = {h1, h2, ..., hn}
and ∀g &isin G,
  • Hg = {h1g, h2g, ..., hng}
where h1g, h2g, ..., hng &isin G.

Assume ∃a,b<n, a &ne b such that
  • hag = hbg
Then by the cancellation laws,
  • ha = hb
a contradiction. Therefore, Hg has n distinct elements. That is, the coset has the same order as the subgroup.

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