Section 7.1, first part

Difficult: The most difficult part of the text for me was, in fact, the definition of a group. I need to go through the different parts of the definition over again so that I can review and understand it better. It was hard to understand because so many of the things we define in this class have a list of properties/characteristics. It is starting to become blurred in my mind. I think it would be helpful for me to see more examples of the difference between a group and a ring.

Reflective: We talked a little bit about permutations and groups (without calling them groups) in my Math 290 class. It is interesting to me that the set of permutations (the example in the book) is a group! I like to think about it because it isn't calculus or difficult crunching of numbers. It is a simple example that shows that mathematics is everywhere. It seems to me that I will find a lot more groups because there are less qualifications required to be a group. I'm excited to see more examples.