Department of Mathematics Server University of Manitoba

Abstract: Motivated by Tommy Kucera's thought provoking colloquium talk on College Algebra the other day, I was reminiscing about my own college algebra days and remembered a couple of techniques that I came across (one dealing with the equational basis problem in trigonometry from Freshman College Algebra and the other on multiplicative functions in number theory in Third Year Modern Algebra). Both are simple well-known results but employ nice, fundamental, classical, algebraic techniques and they may easily be taught in our 333/345/448 algebra courses. I would like to share these ideas with the other members in the Ring Theory Seminar.