3.2, Due January 24

Difficult:

I am still thinking of operations in Z when I'm looking at some operations on rings. I was watching the example on pg 59 where they have (a+b)^2 and all seemed well and good until they mentioned that we can't necessarily say "ab+ba=2ab" because ab might not equal ba.... I have to keep reminding myself that in Z6 it's ok to have 1-2=5.

Reflective:

I found it interesting that this book uses the term "cancellation" but only in light of what has been talked about in my practicum class (as I'm a math ed major). We had talked about how "cancelling" gives the wrong message, like we can just arbitrarily take out or add in what we need to, when really we are "simplifying" not "cancelling."