Algebra

Algebra is a branch of mathematics that deals with properties of operations and the structures these
operations are defined on. Elementary Algebra that follows the study of arithmetic is mostly
occupied with operations on sets of whole and rational numbers and solving first and second order
equations.

The word "algebra" is a shortened misspelled transliteration of an Arabic title al-jebr w'al-
muqabalah (circa 825) by the Persian mathematician known as al-Khowarismi [Words, p. 21].
The al-jebr part means "reunion of broken parts", the second part al-muqabalah translates as "to
place in front of, to balance, to oppose, to set equal." Together they describe symbol manipulations
common in algebra: combining like terms, moving a term to the other side of an equation, etc.

In its English usage in the 14th century, algeber meant "bone-setting," close to its original meaning.
By the 16thcentury, the form algebra appeared in its mathematical meaning. Robert Recorde (c.
1510-1558), the inventor of thesymbol "=" of equality, was the first to use the term in this sense. He,
however, still spelled it as algeber. The misspellers proved to be more numerous, and the current
spelling algebra took roots.

Thus the original meaning of algebra refers to what we today call elementary algebra which is mostly
occupied with solving simple equations. More generally, the term algebra encompasses nowadays
many other fields of mathematics: geometric algebra, abstract algebra, boolean algebra, s-
algebra, to name a few.

Different meanings of “Algebra”

The word "algebra" has several related meanings in mathematics, as a single word or with qualifiers.

 As a single word without article, "algebra" names a broad part of mathematics.

 As a single word with article or in plural, "algebra" denotes a specific mathematical structure.
Examples include those in ring theory and algebra over a field. More generally, in universal
algebra, it can refer to any structure.
 With a qualifier, there is the same distinction:
 Without article, it means a part of algebra, such as linear algebra, elementary algebra (the
symbol-manipulation rules taught in elementary courses of mathematics as part
of primaryand secondary education), or abstract algebra (the study of the algebraic
structures for themselves).
 With an article, it means an instance of some abstract structure, like a Lie algebra or
an associative algebra.
 Frequently both meanings exist for the same qualifier, as in the sentence: Commutative
algebra is the study of commutative rings, which are commutative algebras over the
integers.
Algebra as a Branch of Mathematics
Algebra began with computations similar to those of arithmetic, with letters standing for
numbers.[6] This allowed proofs of properties that are true no matter which numbers are involved. For
example, in the quadratic equation

can be any numbers whatsoever (except that cannot be ), and the quadratic
formula can be used to quickly and easily find the value of the unknown quantity .

As it developed, algebra was extended to other non-numerical objects, such as vectors, matrices,
and polynomials. Then the structural properties of these non-numerical objects were abstracted to
define algebraic structures such as groups, rings, and fields.

Before the 16th century, mathematics was divided into only two subfields, arithmetic and geometry.
Even though some methods, which had been developed much earlier, may be considered nowadays
as algebra, the emergence of algebra and, soon thereafter, of infinitesimal calculus as subfields of
mathematics only dates from 16th or 17th century. From the second half of 19th century on, many
new fields of mathematics appeared, most of which made use of both arithmetic and geometry,
andalmost all of which used algebra.

Today, algebra has grown until it includes many branches of mathematics, as can be seen in
the Mathematics Subject Classification[8] where none of the first level areas (two digit entries) is
called algebra. Today algebra includes section 08-General algebraic systems, 12-Field
theory and polynomials, 13-Commutative algebra, 15-Linear and multilinear algebra; matrix theory,
16-Associative rings and algebras, 17-Nonassociative rings and algebras, 18-Category
theory; homological algebra, 19-K-theory and 20-Group theory. Algebra is also used extensively in
11-Number theory and 14-Algebraic geometry.

History of Algebra
The history of algebra began in ancient Egypt and Babylon, where people learned to solve linear
(ax = b) and quadratic (ax2 + bx = c) equations, as well as indeterminate equations such
as x2 + y2 = z2, whereby several unknowns are involved. The ancient Babylonians solved
arbitrary quadratic equations by essentially the same procedures taught today. They also could
solve some indeterminate equations.

The Alexandrian mathematicians Hero of Alexandria and Diophantus continued the traditions of
Egypt and Babylon, but Diophantus's book Arithmetica is on a much higher level and gives many
surprising solutions to difficult indeterminate equations. This ancient knowledge of solutions of
equations in turn found a home early in the Islamic world, where it was known as the "science of
restoration and balancing." (The Arabic word for restoration, al-jabru,is the root of the word algebra.)
In the 9th century, the Arab mathematician al-Khwarizmi wrote one of the first Arabic algebras, a
systematic exposé of the basic theory of equations, with both examples and proofs. By the end of
the 9th century, the Egyptian mathematician Abu Kamil had stated and proved the basic laws and
identities of algebra and solved such complicated problems as finding x, y, and z such
that x + y + z = 10, x2 + y2 = z2, and xz = y2.

Ancient civilizations wrote out algebraic expressions using only occasional abbreviations, but by
medieval times Islamic mathematicians were able to talk about arbitrarily high powers of the
unknown x, and work out the basic algebra of polynomials (without yet using modern symbolism).
This included the ability to multiply, divide, and find square roots of polynomials as well as a
knowledge of the binomial theorem. The Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet Omar
Khayyam showed how to express roots of cubic equations by line segments obtained by
intersecting conic sections, but he could not find a formula for the roots. A Latin translation of Al-
Khwarizmi's Algebra appeared in the 12th century. In the early 13th century, the great Italian
mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci achieved a close approximation to the solution of the cubic
equation x3 + 2x2 + cx = d. Because Fibonacci had traveled in Islamic lands, he probably used an
Arabic method of successive approximations.

Early in the 16th century, the Italian mathematicians Scipione del Ferro, Niccolò Tartaglia,
and Gerolamo Cardano solved the general cubic equation in terms of the constants appearing in the
equation. Cardano's pupil, Ludovico Ferrari, soon found an exact solution to equations of the fourth
degree (see quartic equation), and as a result, mathematicians for the next several centuries tried to
find a formula for the roots of equations of degree five, or higher. Early in the 19th century, however,
the Norwegian mathematician Niels Abel and the French mathematician Evariste Galois proved that
no such formula exists.

An important development in algebra in the 16th century was the introduction of symbols for the
unknown and for algebraic powers and operations. As a result of this development, Book III of La
géometrie (1637), written by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes, looks
much like a modern algebra text. Descartes's most significant contribution to mathematics, however,
was his discovery of analytic geometry, which reduces the solution of geometric problems to the
solution of algebraic ones. His geometry text also contained the essentials of a course on the theory
of equations, including his so-called rule of signs for counting the number of what Descartes called
the "true" (positive) and "false" (negative) roots of an equation. Work continued through the 18th
century on the theory of equations, but not until 1799 was the proof published, by the German
mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, showing that every polynomial equation has at least one root in
the complex plane (see Number: Complex Numbers).

By the time of Gauss, algebra had entered its modern phase. Attention shifted from
solving polynomial equations to studying the structure of abstract mathematical systems whose
axioms were based on the behavior of mathematical objects, such as complex numbers, that
mathematicians encountered when studying polynomial equations. Two examples of such systems
are algebraic groups (see Group) and quaternions, which share some of the properties of number
systems but also depart from them in important ways. Groups began as systems of permutations
and combinations of roots of polynomials, but they became one of the chief unifying concepts of
19th-century mathematics. Important contributions to their study were made by the French
mathematicians Galois and Augustin Cauchy, the British mathematician Arthur Cayley, and the
Norwegian mathematicians Niels Abel and Sophus Lie. Quaternionswere discovered by British
mathematician and astronomer William Rowan Hamilton, who extended the arithmetic of complex
numbers to quaternions while complex numbers are of the form a + bi, quaternions are of the
form a + bi+ cj + dk.

Immediately after Hamilton's discovery, the German mathematician Hermann Grassmann began
investigating vectors. Despite its abstract character, American physicist J. W. Gibbs recognized
in vector algebra a system of great utility for physicists, just as Hamilton had recognized the
usefulness of quaternions. The widespread influence of this abstract approach led George Boole to
write The Laws of Thought (1854), an algebraic treatment of basic logic. Since that time, modern
algebra—also called abstract algebra—has continued to develop. Important new results have been
discovered, and the subject has found applications in all branches of mathematics and in many of
the sciences as well.

Sets
In mathematics, a set is a collection of distinct objects, considered as an object in its own right. For
example, the numbers 2, 4, and 6 are distinct objects when considered separately, but when they
are considered collectively they form a single set of size three, written {2,4,6}. Sets are one of the
most fundamental concepts in mathematics. Developed at the end of the 19th century, set theory is
now a ubiquitous part of mathematics, and can be used as a foundation from which nearly all of
mathematics can be derived. In mathematics education, elementary topics such as Venn
diagrams are taught at a young age, while more advanced concepts are taught as part of a
university degree. The German word Menge, rendered as "set" in English, was coined by Bernard
Bolzano in his work The Paradoxes of the Infinite.

Definition
A set is a well defined collection of distinct objects. The objects that make up a set (also known as
the elements or members of a set) can be anything: numbers, people, letters of the alphabet, other
sets, and so on. Georg Cantor, the founder of set theory, gave the following definition of a set at the
beginning of his Beiträge zur Begründung der transfiniten Mengenlehre:[1]

A set is a gathering together into a whole of definite, distinct objects of our perception [Anschauung]
or of our thought—which are calledelements of the set.

Sets are conventionally denoted with capital letters. Sets A and B are equal if and only if they have
precisely the same elements.[2]

Cantor's definition turned out to be inadequate for formal mathematics; instead, the notion of a "set"
is taken as an undefined primitive in axiomatic set theory, and its properties are defined by
the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms. The most basic properties are that a set has elements, and that two
sets are equal (one and the same) if and only if every element of each set is an element of the other.
Describing Sets
There are two ways of describing, or specifying the members of, a set. One way is by intensional
definition, using a rule or semantic description:

A is the set whose members are the first four positive integers.
B is the set of colors of the French flag.

The second way is by extension – that is, listing each member of the set. An extensional
definition isdenoted by enclosing the list of members in curly brackets:

C = {4, 2, 1, 3}
D = {blue, white, red}.

One often has the choice of specifying a set either intensionally or extensionally. In the examples
above, for instance, A = C and B = D.

There are two important points to note about sets. First, a set can have two or more members which
are identical, for example, {11, 6, 6}. However, we say that two sets which differ only in that one has
duplicate members are in fact exactly identical (see Axiom of extensionality). Hence, the set {11, 6,
6} is exactly identical to the set {11, 6}. The second important point is that the order in which the
elements of a set are listed is irrelevant (unlike for a sequence or tuple). We can illustrate these two
important points with an example:

{6, 11} = {11, 6} = {11, 6, 6, 11} .

For sets with many elements, the enumeration of members can be abbreviated. For instance, the set
of the first thousand positive integers may be specified extensionally as

{1, 2, 3, ..., 1000},

where the ellipsis ("...") indicates that the list continues in the obvious way. Ellipses may also be
used where sets have infinitely many members. Thus the set of positive even numbers can be
written as {2, 4, 6, 8, ... }.

The notation with braces may also be used in an intensional specification of a set. In this usage, the
braces have the meaning "the set of all ...". So, E = {playing card suits} is the set whose four
members are ♠, ♦, ♥, and ♣. A more general form of this is set-builder notation, through which, for
instance, the set F of the twenty smallest integers that are four less than perfect squares can be
denoted

F = {n2 − 4 : n is an integer; and 0 ≤ n ≤ 19}.

In this notation, the colon (":") means "such that", and the description can be interpreted as "F is the
set of all numbers of the form n2 − 4, such that n is a whole number in the range from 0 to 19
inclusive." Sometimes the vertical bar ("|") is used instead of the colon.
Set Operations
Unions
Two sets can be "added" together. The union of A and B, denoted by A ∪ B, is the set of all things
that are members of either A or B.

Examples:

 {1, 2} ∪ {1, 2} = {1, 2}.

 {1, 2} ∪ {2, 3} = {1, 2, 3}.
 {1, 2, 3} ∪ {3, 4, 5} = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}

Some basic properties of unions:

 A ∪ B = B ∪ A.
 A ∪ (B ∪ C) = (A ∪ B) ∪ C.
 A ⊆ (A ∪ B).
 A ∪ A = A.
 A ∪ ∅ = A.
 A ⊆ B if and only if A ∪ B = B.
Intersections
A new set can also be constructed by determining which members two sets have "in common".
The intersection of A and B, denoted by A ∩ B, is the set of all things that are members of
bothA and B. If A ∩ B = ∅, then A and B are said to be disjoint.

Examples:

 {1, 2} ∩ {1, 2} = {1, 2}.

 {1, 2} ∩ {2, 3} = {2}.

Some basic properties of intersections:

 A ∩ B = B ∩ A.
 A ∩ (B ∩ C) = (A ∩ B) ∩ C.
 A ∩ B ⊆ A.
 A ∩ A = A.
 A ∩ ∅ = ∅.
 A ⊆ B if and only if A ∩ B = A.
Complements
Two sets can also be "subtracted". The relative complement of B in A (also called the set-theoretic
difference of A and B), denoted by A \ B (or A − B), is the set of all elements that are members
of A but not members of B. Note that it is valid to "subtract" members of a set that are not in the set,
such as removing the element green from the set {1, 2, 3}; doing so has no effect.

In certain settings all sets under discussion are considered to be subsets of a given universal set U.
In such cases, U \ A is called the absolute complement or simply complement of A, and is denoted
by A′.

Examples:

 {1, 2} \ {1, 2} = ∅.
 {1, 2, 3, 4} \ {1, 3} = {2, 4}.
 If U is the set of integers, E is the set of even integers, and O is the set of odd integers,
then U \ E = E′ = O.

Some basic properties of complements:

 A \ B ≠ B \ A for A ≠ B.
 A ∪ A′ = U.
 A ∩ A′ = ∅.
 (A′)′ = A.
 A \ A = ∅.
 U′ = ∅ and ∅′ = U.
 A \ B = A ∩ B′.

An extension of the complement is the symmetric difference, defined for sets A, B as

For example, the symmetric difference of {7,8,9,10} and {9,10,11,12} is the set
{7,8,11,12}.
Cartesian product
A new set can be constructed by associating every element of one set with every element of another
set. The Cartesian product of two sets A and B, denoted by A × B is the set of all ordered pairs (a, b)
such that a is a member of A and b is a member of B.

Examples:

 {1, 2} × {red, white} = {(1, red), (1, white), (2, red), (2, white)}.
  {1, 2} × {red, white, green} = {(1, red), (1, white), (1, green), (2, red), (2, white), (2, green)
}.
 {1, 2} × {1, 2} = {(1, 1), (1, 2), (2, 1), (2, 2)}.

Some basic properties of cartesian products:

 A × ∅ = ∅.
 A × (B ∪ C) = (A × B) ∪ (A × C).
 (A ∪ B) × C = (A × C) ∪ (B × C).

Let A and B be finite sets. Then

 | A × B | = | B × A | = | A | × | B |.

For example,

 {a,b,c}×{d,e,f}={(a,d),(a,e),(a,f),(b,d),(b,e),(b,f),(c,d),(c,e),(c,f)}.