Schaum's Outline of Group Theory

Rating:
Summary: Outdated notation and very dull
Review: I know maths books aren't meant to be fun to read, but this book is *extremely* boring. It's got, in my opinion, too much content, and its content could've been explained more efficiently.

Most of the notation used in this book (it was published 36 years ago) is out of date, which can be annoying as it makes the confusion subject of group theory even more confusing.

The good thing about this book is that it's great value for money. However, as said above, it might contain too much if you're an undergraduate student like myself who just wants to understand the basic stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to groups
Review: This book is well organized and broad for a problem-solver, and has several useful features for beginners such as classification of groups up to order 15 and complete multiplication tables for A4 and S4 (no one would take the time to actually write and print these out, but they did in this book).

I also find the problems very well-selected and are frequently used later on, so you feel you didn't just go randomly solving problems.

The authors give many examples of groups and

groupoids, ranging from isometries to Moebius transformations, and a bit of free groups and group presentations are also covered.

The Sylow Theorems are proved in the usual way, as well as the Cauchy Theorem for abelian groups, even though it is not explicitly called by that name.

Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to groups
Review: This book is well organized and broad for a problem-solver, and has several useful features for beginners such as classification of groups up to order 15 and complete multiplication tables for A4 and S4 (no one would take the time to actually write and print these out, but they did in this book).

I also find the problems very well-selected and are frequently used later on, so you feel you didn't just go randomly solving problems.

The authors give many examples of groups and

groupoids, ranging from isometries to Moebius transformations, and a bit of free groups and group presentations are also covered.

The Sylow Theorems are proved in the usual way, as well as the Cauchy Theorem for abelian groups, even though it is not explicitly called by that name.