Section 9.4

Difficult: At first, the most difficult part of the section was getting accustomed to the new notation and concept of defining "fractions." However, it was fairly easy to understand once I got used to it. Lemma 9.29 and Thm. 9.31 were more difficult for me to understand. I followed the proofs, but I don't see how they work. I would like to see an example of these two theorems. I also didn't understand Thm. 9.31 because the proof seemed inadequate. I did not understand how the proof proceeds.

Interesting: We talked a little bit about the field of quotients in my Math 290 class (of course without calling it the "field of quotients"). It is interesting to me that we can explain how division and fractions work by defining an equivalence relation. I like making such a simple concept extend to other rings. I want to look for other integral domains and see what "fractions" look like in these rings. Hopefully we will cover some examples in class.