Tour:Getting started (beginners)

Guided tours are intended to be an online equivalent of textbooks, with a lot more flexibility. You read through a collection of pages, adapted from the wiki to be used as learning resources, and are then presented with a set of exercises and review tools.

So far, only one guided tour has been in preparation -- the guided tour for beginners. This was initially developed in 2008, but was not completed as the focus shifted to first improving the overall quality of the site. The portion of the tour created so far covers basic definitions of groups, subgroups, cosets, and Lagrange's theorem, along with a number of exercises.

We are about to get started on the guided tour for beginners. To get the most from this guided tour, stay faithful to it, i.e. read the articles in the order suggested. You will have various opportunities for detours: some other articles to read so as to get a better understanding of what you're touring, and some just for entertainment. Please try to open these detours in different windows/tabs so that you do not lose track of where you are in the main tour.

This tour is not intended to be a complete introduction to group theory, or a replacement for textbook or course materials. Rather, it is intended as a supplement. To get the most from this tour, keep open your main course book or lecture notes and make sure you can map what's there on the wiki, with what you're learning in the course or from the textbook.

Before starting, you should read the general instructions. You may also find it useful to read the pedagogical notes that explain the structure of the tour in more detail.

The tour is structured as follows.

Part two
This part focuses on providing an understanding of how to do simple manipulations involving groups. We begin by generalizing some of the ideas involving groups, and discussing proofs involving some of the basic manipulations.