Version of 2026-07-02

Notes on the combinatorial fundamentals of algebra, 2 July 2026 (2026-07-02)

A self-contained and elementary introduction to permutations and determinants; also includes some basic material on binomial coefficients and recurrent sequences. Some 100 exercises with solutions, and some 20 more exercises without.

This is a frozen version, created on the 2nd of July 2026, archived here so that it can be referenced. The version on http://www.cip.ifi.lmu.de/~grinberg/ (and in the actual repository) will probably see some updates (and the numbering will change).

This version differs from arXiv:2008.09862v3 in that a number of minor errors have been corrected.

The numbering has not changed since the "10th of January 2019" release (or since arXiv:2008.09862v1), but a few exercises have been added at the end of Chapter 6.