Chapter9The Isomorphism Theorems¶ permalink
Recall that our goal here is to use a subgroup of a group \(G\) to study not just the structure of the subgroup, but the structure of \(G\) outside of that subgroup (the ultimate goal being to get a feeling for the structure of \(G\) as a whole). We've further seen that if we choose \(N\) to be a normal subgroup of \(G\text{,}\) we can do this by studying both \(N\) and the factor group \(G/N\text{.}\) Now, we've noticed that in some cases—in particular, when \(G\) is cyclic–it is not too hard to identify the structure of a factor group of \(G\text{.}\) But what about when \(G\) and \(N\) are more complicated? For instance, we have seen that \(SL(5,\R)\) is a normal subgroup of \(GL(5,\R)\text{.}\) What is the structure of \(GL(5,\R)/SL(5,\R)\text{?}\) That is not so easy to figure out by looking directly at left coset multiplication in the factor group.