An Infinitely Large Napkin

http://web.evanchen.cc/napkin.html

Evan Chen

Version: v1.5.20220208
 When introduced to a new idea, always ask why you should care.
Do not expect an answer right away, but demand one eventually.

— Ravi Vakil [Va17]

If you like this book and want to support me,

please consider buying me a coffee!

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For Brian and Lisa, who finally got me to write it.

� 2021 Evan Chen.

Text licensed under CC-by-SA-4.0. Source files licensed under GNU GPL v3.

This is (still!) an incomplete draft. Please send corrections, comments, pictures of kittens, etc.
to evan@evanchen.cc, or pull-request at https://github.com/vEnhance/napkin.

Last updated February 8, 2022.

Preface
The origin of the name “Napkin” comes from the following quote of mine.

I’ll be eating a quick lunch with some friends of mine who are still in high school.
They’ll ask me what I’ve been up to the last few weeks, and I’ll tell them that I’ve been
learning category theory. They’ll ask me what category theory is about. I tell them
it’s about abstracting things by looking at just the structure-preserving morphisms
between them, rather than the objects themselves. I’ll try to give them the standard
example Grp, but then I’ll realize that they don’t know what a homomorphism is.
So then I’ll start trying to explain what a homomorphism is, but then I’ll remember
that they haven’t learned what a group is. So then I’ll start trying to explain what a
group is, but by the time I finish writing the group axioms on my napkin, they’ve
already forgotten why I was talking about groups in the first place. And then it’s
1PM, people need to go places, and I can’t help but think:
“Man, if I had forty hours instead of forty minutes, I bet I could actually have explained
this all”.

This book was initially my attempt at those forty hours, but has grown considerably
since then.

About this book

The Infinitely Large Napkin is a light but mostly self-contained introduction to a large
amount of higher math.
I should say at once that this book is not intended as a replacement for dedicated
books or courses; the amount of depth is not comparable. On the flip side, the benefit of
this “light” approach is that it becomes accessible to a larger audience, since the goal is
merely to give the reader a feeling for any particular topic rather than to emulate a full
semester of lectures.
I initially wrote this book with talented high-school students in mind, particularly
those with math-olympiad type backgrounds. Some remnants of that cultural bias can
still be felt throughout the book, particularly in assorted challenge problems which are
taken from mathematical competitions. However, in general I think this would be a
good reference for anyone with some amount of mathematical maturity and curiosity.
Examples include but certainly not limited to: math undergraduate majors, physics/CS
majors, math PhD students who want to hear a little bit about fields other than their own,
advanced high schoolers who like math but not math contests, and unusually intelligent
kittens fluent in English.

Source code
The project is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/vEnhance/napkin. Pull
requests are quite welcome! I am also happy to receive suggestions and corrections by
email.

Philosophy behind the Napkin approach

As far as I can tell, higher math for high-school students comes in two flavors:

v
vi Napkin, by Evan Chen (v1.5.20220208)

� Someone tells you about the hairy ball theorem in the form “you can’t comb the
hair on a spherical cat” then doesn’t tell you anything about why it should be true,
what it means to actually “comb the hair”, or any of the underlying theory, leaving
you with just some vague notion in your head.

� You take a class and prove every result in full detail, and at some point you stop
caring about what the professor is saying.

Presumably you already know how unsatisfying the first approach is. So the second
approach seems to be the default, but I really think there should be some sort of middle
ground here.
Unlike university, it is not the purpose of this book to train you to solve exercises or
write proofs1 , or prepare you for research in the field. Instead I just want to show you
some interesting math. The things that are presented should be memorable and worth
caring about. For that reason, proofs that would be included for completeness in any
ordinary textbook are often omitted here, unless there is some idea in the proof which
I think is worth seeing. In particular, I place a strong emphasis over explaining why a
theorem should be true rather than writing down its proof. This is a recurrent theme of
this book:

Natural explanations supersede proofs.

My hope is that after reading any particular chapter in Napkin, one might get the
following out of it:

� Knowing what the precise definitions are of the main characters,

� Being acquainted with the few really major examples,

� Knowing the precise statements of famous theorems, and having a sense of why
they should be true.

Understanding “why” something is true can have many forms. This is sometimes
accomplished with a complete rigorous proof; in other cases, it is given by the idea of the
proof; in still other cases, it is just a few key examples with extensive cheerleading.
Obviously this is nowhere near enough if you want to e.g. do research in a field; but if
you are just a curious outsider, I hope that it’s more satisfying than the elevator pitch or
Wikipedia articles. Even if you do want to learn a topic with serious depth, I hope that
it can be a good zoomed-out overview before you really dive in, because in many senses
the choice of material is “what I wish someone had told me before I started”.

More pedagogical comments and references

The preface would become too long if I talked about some of my pedagogical decisions
chapter by chapter, so Appendix A contains those comments instead.
In particular, I often name specific references, and the end of that appendix has more
references. So this is a good place to look if you want further reading.
1
Which is not to say problem-solving isn’t valuable; I myself am a math olympiad coach at heart. It’s
just not the point of this book.
 Preface vii

Historical and personal notes

I began writing this book in December of 2014, after having finished my first semester of
undergraduate at Harvard. It became my main focus for about 18 months after that,
as I became immersed in higher math. I essentially took only math classes, (gleefully
ignoring all my other graduation requirements) and merged as much of it as I could (as
well as lots of other math I learned on my own time) into the Napkin.
Towards August of 2016, though, I finally lost steam. The first public drafts went
online then, and I decided to step back. Having burnt out slightly, I then took a break
from higher math, and spent the remaining two undergraduate years2 working extensively
as a coach for the American math olympiad team, and trying to spend as much time
with my friends as I could before they graduated and went their own ways.
During those two years, readers sent me many kind words of gratitude, many reports
of errors, and many suggestions for additions. So in November of 2018, some weeks into
my first semester as a math PhD student, I decided I should finish what I had started.
Some months later, here is what I have.

Acknowledgements
add more
acknowledg- I am indebted to countless people for this work. Here is a partial (surely incomplete)
ments
list.

� Thanks to all my teachers and professors for teaching me much of the material
covered in these notes, as well as the authors of all the references I have cited here.
A special call-out to [Ga14], [Le14], [Sj05], [Ga03], [Ll15], [Et11], [Ko14], [Va17], [Pu02],
[Go18], which were especially influential.

� Thanks also to dozens of friends and strangers who read through preview copies
of my draft, and pointed out errors and gave other suggestions. Special mention
to Andrej Vuković and Alexander Chua for together catching over a thousand
errors. Thanks also to Brian Gu and Tom Tseng for many corrections. (If you find
mistakes or have suggestions yourself, I would love to hear them!)

� I’d also like to express my gratitude for many, many kind words I received during
the development of this project. These generous comments led me to keep working
on this, and were largely responsible for my decision in November 2018 to begin
updating the Napkin again.

Finally, a huge thanks to the math olympiad community, from which the Napkin
(and me) has its roots. All the enthusiasm, encouragement, and thank-you notes I have
received over the years led me to begin writing this in the first place. I otherwise would
never have the arrogance to dream a project like this was at all possible. And of course I
would be nowhere near where I am today were it not for the life-changing journey I took
in chasing my dreams to the IMO. Forever TWN2!

2
Alternatively: “ . . . and spent the next two years forgetting everything I had painstakingly learned”.
Which made me grateful for all the past notes in the Napkin!
Advice for the reader
�1 Prerequisites
As explained in the preface, the main prerequisite is some amount of mathematical
maturity. This means I expect the reader to know how to read and write a proof, follow
logical arguments, and so on.
I also assume the reader is familiar with basic terminology about sets and functions
(e.g. “what is a bijection?”). If not, one should consult Appendix E.

�2 Deciding what to read

There is no need to read this book in linear order: it covers all sorts of areas in mathematics,
and there are many paths you can take. In Chapter 0, I give a short overview for each
part explaining what you might expect to see in that part.
For now, here is a brief chart showing how the chapters depend on each other; again
see Chapter 0 for details. Dependencies are indicated by arrows; dotted lines are optional
dependencies. I suggest that you simply pick a chapter you find interesting,
and then find the shortest path. With that in mind, I hope the length of the entire
PDF is not intimidating.

Ch 81-87 Ch 1,3-5 Ch 9-15,18 Ch 2,6-8

Set Theory Abs Alg Lin Alg Ch 23-25 Topology
Quantum
Ch 26-30
Calc
Ch 16 Ch 19-22
Grp Act Rep Th
Ch 31-33
Ch 60-63 Ch 42-45 Cmplx Ana
Cat Th Diff Geo
Ch 17
Grp Classif
Ch 34-41
Measure/Pr

Ch 70-74 Ch 57-59 Ch 46-51

Alg Geo 1 Alg Top 1 Alg NT 1

Ch 75-80 Ch 64-69 Ch 52-56

Alg Geo 2-3 Alg Top 2 Alg NT 2

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x Napkin, by Evan Chen (v1.5.20220208)

�3 Questions, exercises, and problems

In this book, there are three hierarchies:

� An inline question is intended to be offensively easy, mostly a chance to help you

internalize definitions. If you find yourself unable to answer one or two of them, it
probably means I explained it badly and you should complain to me. But if you
can’t answer many, you likely missed something important: read back.

� An inline exercise is more meaty than a question, but shouldn’t have any “tricky”
steps. Often I leave proofs of theorems and propositions as exercises if they are
instructive and at least somewhat interesting.

� Each chapter features several trickier problems at the end. Some are reasonable,
but others are legitimately difficult olympiad-style problems. Harder problems are
marked with up to three chili peppers ( ), like this paragraph.
In addition to difficulty annotations, the problems are also marked by how important
they are to the big picture.
– Normal problems, which are hopefully fun but non-central.
– Daggered problems, which are (usually interesting) results that one should
know, but won’t be used directly later.
– Starred problems, which are results which will be used later on in the book.1

Several hints and solutions can be found in Appendices B and C.

Image from [Go08]

1
This is to avoid the classic “we are done by PSet 4, Problem 8” that happens in college sometimes, as
if I remembered what that was.
Advice for the reader xi

�4 Paper
At the risk of being blunt,
Read this book with pencil and paper.

Here’s why:

Image from [Or]

You are not God. You cannot keep everything in your head.2 If you’ve printed out a
hard copy, then write in the margins. If you’re trying to save paper, grab a notebook or
something along with the ride. Somehow, some way, make sure you can write. Thanks.

�5 On the importance of examples

I am pathologically obsessed with examples. In this book, I place all examples in large
boxes to draw emphasis to them, which leads to some pages of the book simply consisting
of sequences of boxes one after another. I hope the reader doesn’t mind.
I also often highlight a “prototypical example” for some sections, and reserve the color
red for such a note. The philosophy is that any time the reader sees a definition or a
theorem about such an object, they should test it against the prototypical example. If
the example is a good prototype, it should be immediately clear why this definition is
intuitive, or why the theorem should be true, or why the theorem is interesting, et cetera.
Let me tell you a secret. Whenever I wrote a definition or a theorem in this book, I
would have to recall the exact statement from my (quite poor) memory. So instead I
often consider the prototypical example, and then only after that do I remember what
the definition or the theorem is. Incidentally, this is also how I learned all the definitions
in the first place. I hope you’ll find it useful as well.
2
See also https://usamo.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/writing/ and the source above.
xii Napkin, by Evan Chen (v1.5.20220208)

�6 Conventions and notations

This part describes some of the less familiar notations and definitions and settles for
once and for all some annoying issues (“is zero a natural number?”). Most of these are
“remarks for experts”: if something doesn’t make sense, you probably don’t have to worry
about it for now.
A full glossary of notation used can be found in the appendix.

�6.i Natural numbers are positive

The set N is the set of positive integers, not including 0. In the set theory chapters, we
use ω = {0, 1, . . . } instead, for consistency with the rest of the book.

�6.ii Sets and equivalence relations

This is brief, intended as a reminder for experts. Consult Appendix E for full details.
An equivalence relation on a set X is a relation ∼ which is symmetric, reflexive, and
transitive. An equivalence relation partitions X into several equivalence classes. We
will denote this by X/∼. An element of such an equivalence class is a representative
of that equivalence class.
I always use ∼= for an “isomorphism”-style relation (formally: a relation which is an
isomorphism in a reasonable category). The only time � is used in the Napkin is for
homotopic paths.
I generally use ⊆ and � since these are non-ambiguous, unlike ⊂. I only use ⊂ on
rare occasions in which equality obviously does not hold yet pointing it out would be
distracting. For example, I write Q ⊂ R since “Q � R” is distracting.
I prefer S \ T to S − T .
The power set of S (i.e., the set of subsets of S), is denoted either by 2S or P(S).

�6.iii Functions
This is brief, intended as a reminder for experts. Consult Appendix E for full details.
f
Let X −
→ Y be a function:
� By f pre (T ) I mean the pre-image
f pre (T ) := {x ∈ X | f (x) ∈ T } .
This is in contrast to the f −1 (T ) used in the rest of the world; I only use f −1 for
an inverse function.
By abuse of notation, we may abbreviate f pre ({y}) to f pre (y). We call f pre (y) a
fiber.
� By f img (S) I mean the image
f img (S) := {f (x) | x ∈ S} .
Almost everyone else in the world uses f (S) (though f [S] sees some use, and f “(S)
is often used in logic) but this is abuse of notation, and I prefer f img (S) for emphasis.
This image notation is not standard.
� If S ⊆ X, then the restriction of f to S is denoted f �S , i.e. it is the function
f �S : S → Y .
� Sometimes functions f : X → Y are injective or surjective; I may emphasize this
sometimes by writing f : X �→ Y or f : X � Y , respectively.
Advice for the reader xiii

�6.iv Cycle notation for permutations

Additionally, a permutation on a finite set may be denoted in cycle notation, as described
in say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation#Cycle_notation. For example
the notation (1 2 3 4)(5 6 7) refers to the permutation with 1 �→ 2, 2 �→ 3, 3 �→ 4, 4 �→ 1,
5 �→ 6, 6 �→ 7, 7 �→ 5. Usage of this notation will usually be obvious from context.

�6.v Rings
All rings have a multiplicative identity 1 unless otherwise specified. We allow 0 = 1 in
general rings but not in integral domains.
All rings are commutative unless otherwise specified. There is an elaborate
scheme for naming rings which are not commutative, used only in the chapter on
cohomology rings:

Graded Not Graded

1 not required graded pseudo-ring pseudo-ring
Anticommutative, 1 not required anticommutative pseudo-ring N/A
Has 1 graded ring N/A
Anticommutative with 1 anticommutative ring N/A
Commutative with 1 commutative graded ring ring

On the other hand, an algebra always has 1, but it need not be commutative.

�6.vi Choice
We accept the Axiom of Choice, and use it freely.

�7 Further reading
The appendix Appendix A contains a list of resources I like, and explanations of peda-
gogical choices that I made for each chapter. I encourage you to check it out.
In particular, this is where you should go for further reading! There are some topics
that should be covered in the Napkin, but are not, due to my own ignorance or laziness.
The references provided in this appendix should hopefully help partially atone for my
omissions.
Contents
Preface v

Advice for the reader ix

1 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
2 Deciding what to read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
3 Questions, exercises, and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
4 Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
5 On the importance of examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
6 Conventions and notations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
7 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

I Starting Out 33

0 Sales pitches 35
0.1 The basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
0.2 Abstract algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
0.3 Real and complex analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
0.4 Algebraic number theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
0.5 Algebraic topology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
0.6 Algebraic geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
0.7 Set theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

1 Groups 41
1.1 Definition and examples of groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
1.2 Properties of groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
1.3 Isomorphisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
1.4 Orders of groups, and Lagrange’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
1.5 Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
1.6 Groups of small orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
1.7 Unimportant long digression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
1.8 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

2 Metric spaces 53
2.1 Definition and examples of metric spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.2 Convergence in metric spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.3 Continuous maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.4 Homeomorphisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.5 Extended example/definition: product metric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.6 Open sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.7 Closed sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2.8 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

II Basic Abstract Algebra 65

3 Homomorphisms and quotient groups 67

3.1 Generators and group presentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

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16 Napkin, by Evan Chen (v1.5.20220208)

3.2 Homomorphisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.3 Cosets and modding out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.4 (Optional) Proof of Lagrange’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.5 Eliminating the homomorphism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.6 (Digression) The first isomorphism theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.7 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

4 Rings and ideals 79

4.1 Some motivational metaphors about rings vs groups . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.2 (Optional) Pedagogical notes on motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.3 Definition and examples of rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.4 Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.5 Homomorphisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.6 Ideals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.7 Generating ideals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.8 Principal ideal domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.9 Noetherian rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.10 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

5 Flavors of rings 91
5.1 Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2 Integral domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.3 Prime ideals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5.4 Maximal ideals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.5 Field of fractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.6 Unique factorization domains (UFD’s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.7 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

III Basic Topology 99

6 Properties of metric spaces 101

6.1 Boundedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.2 Completeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.3 Let the buyer beware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6.4 Subspaces, and (inb4) a confusing linguistic point . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

7 Topological spaces 107

7.1 Forgetting the metric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7.2 Re-definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.3 Hausdorff spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.4 Subspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7.5 Connected spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
7.6 Path-connected spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
7.7 Homotopy and simply connected spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
7.8 Bases of spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
7.9 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

8 Compactness 117
8.1 Definition of sequential compactness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Contents 17

8.2 Criteria for compactness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

8.3 Compactness using open covers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
8.4 Applications of compactness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
8.5 (Optional) Equivalence of formulations of compactness . . . . . . . . . . 123
8.6 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

IV Linear Algebra 127

9 Vector spaces 131

9.1 The definitions of a ring and field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
9.2 Modules and vector spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
9.3 Direct sums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
9.4 Linear independence, spans, and basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
9.5 Linear maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
9.6 What is a matrix? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
9.7 Subspaces and picking convenient bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
9.8 A cute application: Lagrange interpolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
9.9 (Digression) Arrays of numbers are evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
9.10 A word on general modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
9.11 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

10 Eigen-things 147
10.1 Why you should care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
10.2 Warning on assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
10.3 Eigenvectors and eigenvalues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
10.4 The Jordan form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
10.5 Nilpotent maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
10.6 Reducing to the nilpotent case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
10.7 (Optional) Proof of nilpotent Jordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
10.8 Algebraic and geometric multiplicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
10.9 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

11 Dual space and trace 157

11.1 Tensor product . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
11.2 Dual space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
11.3 V ∨ ⊗ W gives matrices from V to W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
11.4 The trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
11.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

12 Determinant 165
12.1 Wedge product . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
12.2 The determinant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
12.3 Characteristic polynomials, and Cayley-Hamilton . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
12.4 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

13 Inner product spaces 173

13.1 The inner product . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
13.2 Norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
13.3 Orthogonality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
13.4 Hilbert spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
18 Napkin, by Evan Chen (v1.5.20220208)

13.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

14 Bonus: Fourier analysis 181

14.1 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
14.2 A reminder on Hilbert spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
14.3 Common examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
14.4 Summary, and another teaser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
14.5 Parseval and friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
14.6 Application: Basel problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
14.7 Application: Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
14.8 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

15 Duals, adjoint, and transposes 191

15.1 Dual of a map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
15.2 Identifying with the dual space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
15.3 The adjoint (conjugate transpose) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
15.4 Eigenvalues of normal maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
15.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

V More on Groups 199

16 Group actions overkill AIME problems 201

16.1 Definition of a group action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
16.2 Stabilizers and orbits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
16.3 Burnside’s lemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
16.4 Conjugation of elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
16.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

17 Find all groups 207

17.1 Sylow theorems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
17.2 (Optional) Proving Sylow’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
17.3 (Optional) Simple groups and Jordan-Hölder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
17.4 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

18 The PID structure theorem 213

18.1 Finitely generated abelian groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
18.2 Some ring theory prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
18.3 The structure theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
18.4 Reduction to maps of free R-modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
18.5 Smith normal form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
18.6 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

VI Representation Theory 221

19 Representations of algebras 223

19.1 Algebras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
19.2 Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
19.3 Direct sums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
19.4 Irreducible and indecomposable representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
19.5 Morphisms of representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Contents 19

19.6 The representations of Matd (k) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

19.7 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

20 Semisimple algebras 233

20.1 Schur’s lemma continued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
20.2 Density theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
20.3 Semisimple algebras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
20.4 Maschke’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
20.5 Example: the representations of C[S3 ] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
20.6 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

21 Characters 241
21.1 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
21.2 The dual space modulo the commutator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
21.3 Orthogonality of characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
21.4 Examples of character tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
21.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

22 Some applications 249

22.1 Frobenius divisibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
22.2 Burnside’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
22.3 Frobenius determinant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

VII Quantum Algorithms 253

23 Quantum states and measurements 255

23.1 Bra-ket notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
23.2 The state space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
23.3 Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
23.4 Entanglement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
23.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

24 Quantum circuits 263

24.1 Classical logic gates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
24.2 Reversible classical logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
24.3 Quantum logic gates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
24.4 Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
24.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

25 Shor’s algorithm 271

25.1 The classical (inverse) Fourier transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
25.2 The quantum Fourier transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
25.3 Shor’s algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

VIII Calculus 101 277

26 Limits and series 279

26.1 Completeness and inf/sup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
26.2 Proofs of the two key completeness properties of R . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
26.3 Monotonic sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
20 Napkin, by Evan Chen (v1.5.20220208)

26.4 Infinite series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

26.5 Series addition is not commutative: a horror story . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
26.6 Limits of functions at points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
26.7 Limits of functions at infinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
26.8 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

27 Bonus: A hint of p-adic numbers 291

27.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
27.2 Algebraic perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
27.3 Analytic perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
27.4 Mahler coefficients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
27.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

28 Differentiation 303
28.1 Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
28.2 How to compute them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
28.3 Local (and global) maximums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
28.4 Rolle and friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
28.5 Smooth functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
28.6 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

29 Power series and Taylor series 315

29.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
29.2 Power series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
29.3 Differentiating them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
29.4 Analytic functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
29.5 A definition of Euler’s constant and exponentiation . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
29.6 This all works over complex numbers as well, except also complex analysis
is heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
29.7 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

30 Riemann integrals 323

30.1 Uniform continuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
30.2 Dense sets and extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
30.3 Defining the Riemann integral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
30.4 Meshes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
30.5 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328

IX Complex Analysis 331

31 Holomorphic functions 333

31.1 The nicest functions on earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
31.2 Complex differentiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
31.3 Contour integrals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
31.4 Cauchy-Goursat theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
31.5 Cauchy’s integral theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
31.6 Holomorphic functions are analytic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
31.7 A few harder problems to think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343