Customer Reviews

Group Theory (Dover Books on Mathematics)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Group Theory" (W.R.Scott) is an excellent textbook, with an axiomatic, temperate style which avoid useless gossiping; thanks to such concision, this book contains numerous results generally missing in other courses on the same subject, and often emphasizes interesting variations of some theories.
A great deal of investigation exercises complete this reference work. To my opinion, this book should be recommended to anyone who wants to begin studies on group theory.

This book is fantastic in my opinion. The ball gets rolling right away, and proceeds in a concise, rigorous fashion all the way to the end. "Pedantic" would be precisely the wrong word to describe the book. "Rigorous" is more like it. It doesn't bother for one second with the "hold my hands..." approach and certainly wastes no time on extraneous motivational stuff. For that, perhaps one should try Tony Robbins.

As a physicist, I first learned group theory from Tinkham's excellent "Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics," also a Dover, which is geared on all cylinders toward physical applications. There are times however, I want nothing but mathematics in all its stirling beauty. Definitions -> logic -> theorems. No namby-pamby stuff.

I had such a great time reading this book. If you have a soft spot for the prestineness of mathematics, I suspect you will enjoy this book as much as I did.

This is probably the worst book on Group Theory a beginner could buy. If you're not a beginner, the book is dated and quite pedantic. The book lacks historic motivation, it lacks algebraic and geometric motivation, it lacks combinatorial and number-theoretic motivation -- so what then is it's motivation? Good question. It even lacks a comprehensive bibliography. If E. Galois was alive, I'm sure he'd ask for a duel with W.R. Scott for the pedantic way he's treated the subject. But don't expect to even find one paragraph about E. Galois in this book, It's utterly devoid of historic comment.

I give this book two stars because it's a cheap Dover edition, and as such doesn't hurt the pocket book much. But trust me, there is no want of better books on the subject. Try the classics on Group Theory by Hall, Kurosh or Zassenhaus before you try this one.

Scott is rooted in the rigorously linear approach to proof techniques so traceable to Hardy et. al.. A little redundancy would have been welcome but the exposition is for mathematicians, not physicists or computer scientists; bear with it; at least sketch every problem, formulate your own examples. If you wish a cursory introduction to groups this ain't it.

NOTE:The two books I make reference to here were purchased from Amazon.

I recently bought 'Advanced Calculus' to replace one that I lost which was superior to this recently purchased Advanced Calculus book. The first chapter of this book was about 'sets'. I returned because if I wanted to read about sets I would have bought one about sets.

Now about the 'Group Theory' book. A much BIGGER disappointment. Since Group Theory is based on sets it would have been very appropriate for this book to cover Sets first. No, instead it starts immediately with set concepts on the very first page as if this was a continuation of a lecture on Advance Group Theory from the day before. I'm still looking for a Group Theory book that starts at the beginning. Don't buy this book unless you were 'present in the lecture the day before'