If the ideal is principal, it is free, since it is torsionfree and finitely generated. Sorry, I am a bit off today. I had three midterms in one week, and I am having another tomorrow. I'm snoozing off.
Let me think about it.
@blue Today in fact I had combinatorics. I did 4 out of 5 problems, I didn't have the energy to finish the 5th. =P
you want to reason the other way around: if J is rank-1 free inside R, then it is a principal ideal. conversely if J is not a principal ideal in a domain then if it's free it must have rank >1. suppose R^n -> J is an R-module isomorphism. argue it has nontrivial kernel. (any two nonzero elements in an ideal satisfy a nontrivial R-relation)
@PedroTamaroff ah. how many hours did you have total?
my diff equ exams I remember I knew how to solve every problem immediately, and was writing the whole time, and still always only barely managed to finish in the alloted time. must have been even worse for the other students.
I don't know if this is over my head, but it seems pretty detailed work.
Also, this is the first problem I had in the midterm today. Let $a_n$ denote the number of words of length $n$ in $A,B,C$ such that no $B$ is adjacent to a $C$. One had to find a recurrence for $a_n$ (with a hint), then find the GF for $a_n$, then find a closed formula. The recurrence was $$a_n=2\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}a_i-a_{n-1}+2$$ for $n>0$. The GF was rational, and then some partial fractions did the work.
if it were principal, then 7 and 2+sqrt(-10) would share a nonunit divisor. since they are irreducible, this would imply they are associate. so (2+sqrt(-10))/7 would be a unit in Z[sqrt(-10)]. but it isn't even in that ring.
Yes, that is my idea too, but I didn't get this: "you want to reason the other way around: if J is rank-1 free inside R, then it is a principal ideal. conversely if J is not a principal ideal in a domain then if it's free it must have rank >1. suppose R^n -> J is an R-module isomorphism. argue it has nontrivial kernel. (any two nonzero elements in an ideal satisfy a nontrivial R-relation)"
right. you're showing principal implies free. but we're trying to determine whether a nonprincipal ideal is free or not, so your implication is irrelevant, because it goes in the wrong direction.
"principal implies free" is of no help in determining if a nonprincipal ideal is free or not
I have this basic problem: How many ways can 11 boys on a soccer team be grouped into 4 forwards, 3 midfielders, 3 defenders, and 1 goalie? If anyone knows a Q&A I would be grateful for a link, I could not find one but I'm sure it's there somewhere.
@KajHansen you can narrow it down to 10,20,30,40 since 5 and 15 are cyclicity-forcing. go the rest of the way using sylow theory to force normal subgroups, for which the quotients will be small enough to examine by hand
I can use the binomial coefficient to figure out how many ways there are to group the boys into four groups. But I don't know how to add the constraint about how many boys should be in each group.
@Pickett arrange the 11 boys in sequence. make the first four forwards, the next three midfielders, the next three defenders, and the last one a goalie. by a factor of how much are we overcounting?
@Pickett Well, you have 11 guys. You need to assign them to 1,4,3,3. You can pick the first guy in 11 ways. The second, in $\binom{10}4$ ways, the third in $\binom 64$ ways, &c.
@Pickett You can pick the goalie in 11 ways. Now you have 10 people. You pick a subset of size 4. Now you have 6 elements. You pick a subset of size 3. Now you're done. Party.
You split your group as 1|234|567|891011 and shuffle. Since inside the brackets, order is irrelevant, and brackets have size 3,3,4,1, you get $$\binom{11}{1,3,3,4}$$
Does there exist two non-constant polynomials $f(x),g(x)\in\mathbb Z[x]$ such that for all integers $m,n$, gcd$(f(m),g(n))=1$?
I think there are no such polynomials, but how to prove?