Let $G$ a group of order $mp^n$ where $p$ is prime. Let $k\leq n$. Is there an element of order $p^k$ ?    Since $p$ divide $|G|$, by Cauchy theorem, there is $g\in G$ s.t. $g$ has order $p$. I can't do better. I tried to use the fact that there is a $p-$Sylow group, but it just confirm the fact that there is an element of order $p$, not of order $p^k$.
By Cauchy's theorem, if a prime number $p$ divides the order of a group $G$, then there is an element $g$ in $G$ whose order is $p$. In addition, if $|G|$ admits a prime decomposition with a factor $p^k$, then Sylow's theorem tells us that a subgroup of order $p^k$ must exist.   My question is the following. If $|G|$ admits a prime decomposition with a factor $p^k$, does this imply that an element of order $p^k$ must exist in $G$?   Update: As explained in Mindlack's answer (among others), the implication does not hold and simple counterexamples exist. In the comments, Mindlack discusses special cases where such an element exists.
When $f(x+1)-f(x)=f'(x)$, what are the solutions for $f(x)$? Create a virtual file that is actually a command How to find the value of $\lim_{n\to\infty}S(n)$, where $S(n)$ is given by $$S(n)=\displaystyle\sum_{k=1}^{n} \dfrac{k}{n^2+k^2}$$   is unable to calculate it.  This is a question from a questions booklet, and the options for the answer are--  $\begin{align} &amp;A) \dfrac{\pi}{2} \\ &amp;B) \log 2 \\ &amp;C) \dfrac{\pi}{4} \\ &amp;D) \dfrac{1}{2} \log 2 \end{align}$ Consider the following table:  id  title   genre1  genre2  genre3  genre4  genre5 1   Movie1  Thriller    Crime   NULL    NULL    NULL 2   Movie2  Fantasy NULL    NULL    NULL    NULL 3   Movie3  Political   Philosophical   Historical  NULL    NULL 4   Movie4  Science Fiction NULL    NULL    NULL    NULL   When I unpivot genre1, genre2, ... the NULL values are removed, so that, for example, the rows for Movie1 would be:  id title  genre     original_column 1  Movie1 Thriller  genre1 1  Movie1 Crime     genre2   Is there a way to include NULL values, for example:  id title  genre     original_column 1  Movie1 Thriller  genre1 1  Movie1 Crime     genre2 1  Movie1 NULL      genre3 1  Movie1 NULL      genre4 1  Movie1 NULL      genre5   I can SELECT ISNULL(genre1, '*'), ISNULL(genre2, '*') ..., but suppose I want the values to appear as NULL? Is there a better way than:  WITH  -- SELECT that unpivots table AS unpivoted SELECT unpivoted.id,    unpivoted.title,    ,CASE unpivoted.genre WHEN '*' THEN NULL ELSE unpivoted.genre END    ,unpivoted.original_transaction FROM unpivoted   Also, I notice that the query that returns the source data to be unpivoted MUST have an alias. For example:  SELECT ... FROM   -- *must* give it an alias or it's a syntax error   (SELECT ... FROM) AS source    UNPIVOT(genre for original_column IN (genre1,genre2, genre3,genre4,genre5))   Does anyone know why? I have not found a way to refer to the alias anywhere in the query. Can someone help me figure out what this TiKZ code does? How can momentum but not energy be conserved in an inelastic collision? In inelastic collisions, kinetic energy changes, so the velocities of the objects also change.  So how is momentum conserved in inelastic collisions? How make f[{x,y}] evaluate as f[x,y]? Interaction with the site on the app should count towards Enthusiast/Fanatic If I do any of the below, which would normally constitute "activity" on any Stack Exchange site (including mobile):   View my profile Vote on any question or comment Visit one or more questions   ...then Stack Exchange considers me to have "visited" the site.  If I do any of the below on the mobile app:   Vote on any question or comment Visit one or more questions   ...then Stack Exchange does not consider me to have visited the site.  If one wants the app to have feature parity with the mobile site, then shouldn't my participation within the app also count towards the Enthusiast/Fanatic badge? I have a sequence $T_1,T_2,\ldots$ of independent exponential random variables with paramter $\lambda$. I take the sum $S=\sum_{i=1}^n T_i$ and now I would like to calculate the probability density function.  Well, I know that $P(T_i&gt;t)=e^{-\lambda t}$ and therefore $f_{T_i}(t)=\lambda e^{-\lambda t}$ so I need to find $P(T_1+\cdots+T_n&gt;t)$ and take the derivative. But I cannot expand the probability term, you have any ideas? Using right-hand Riemann sum to evaluate the limit of $ \frac{n}{n^2+1}+ \cdots+\frac{n}{n^2+n^2}$ I'm asked to prove that $$\lim_{n \to \infty}\left(\frac{n}{n^2+1}+\frac{n}{n^2+4}+\frac{n}{n^2+9}+\cdots+\frac{n}{n^2+n^2}\right)=\frac{\pi}{4}$$ This looks like it can be solved with Riemann sums, so I proceed:  \begin{align*} \lim_{n \to \infty}\left(\frac{n}{n^2+1}+\frac{n}{n^2+4}+\frac{n}{n^2+9}+\cdots+\frac{n}{n^2+n^2}\right)&amp;=\lim_{n \to \infty} \sum_{k=1}^{n}\frac{n}{n^2+k^2}\\ &amp;=\lim_{n \to \infty} \sum_{k=1}^{n}(\frac{1}{n})(\frac{n^2}{n^2+k^2})\\ &amp;=\lim_{n \to \infty} \sum_{k=1}^{n}(\frac{1}{n})(\frac{1}{1+(k/n)^2})\\ &amp;=\lim_{n \to \infty} \sum_{k=1}^{n}f(\frac{k}{n})(\frac{k-(k-1)}{n})\\ &amp;=\int_{0}^{1}\frac{1}{1+x^2}dx=\frac{\pi}{4} \end{align*}  where $f(x)=\frac{1}{1+x^2}$. Is this correct, are there any steps where I am not clear? Python is quite cool, but unfortunately, its debugger is not as good as perl -d.    One thing that I do very commonly when experimenting with code is to call a function from within the debugger, and step into that function, like so:  # NOTE THAT THIS PROGRAM EXITS IMMEDIATELY WITHOUT CALLING FOO() ~&gt; cat -n /tmp/show_perl.pl 1  #!/usr/local/bin/perl 2 3  sub foo { 4      print "hi\n"; 5      print "bye\n"; 6  } 7 8  exit 0;  ~&gt; perl -d /tmp/show_perl.pl  Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.28 Editor support available.  Enter h or `h h' for help, or `man perldebug' for more help.  main::(/tmp/show_perl.pl:8):    exit 0;  # MAGIC HAPPENS HERE -- I AM STEPPING INTO A FUNCTION THAT I AM CALLING INTERACTIVELY   DB&lt;1&gt; s foo()  main::((eval 6)[/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.6/perl5db.pl:628]:3): 3:      foo();     DB&lt;&lt;2&gt;&gt; s main::foo(/tmp/show_perl.pl:4):     print "hi\n";     DB&lt;&lt;2&gt;&gt; n hi main::foo(/tmp/show_perl.pl:5):     print "bye\n";     DB&lt;&lt;2&gt;&gt; n bye     DB&lt;2&gt; n Debugged program terminated.  Use q to quit or R to restart,   use O inhibit_exit to avoid stopping after program termination,   h q, h R or h O to get additional info.      DB&lt;2&gt; q   This is incredibly useful when trying to step through a function's handling of various different inputs to figure out why it fails.  However, it does not seem to work in either pdb or pydb (I'd show an equivalent python example to the one above but it results in a large exception stack dump).  So my question is twofold:   Am I missing something? Is there a python debugger that would indeed let me do this?   Obviously I could put the calls in the code myself, but I love working interactively, eg. not having to start from scratch when I want to try calling with a slightly different set of arguments. Why are properties lost in the Cayley–Dickson construction? Motivating question:    I'm aware that one can construct a hierarchy of number systems via the Cayley–Dickson process:  $$\mathbb{R} \subset \mathbb{C} \subset \mathbb{H} \subset \mathbb{O} \subset \mathbb{S} \subset \ldots $$  "Reals" $\subset$ "Complex" $\subset$ "Quaternions" $\subset$ "Octonions" $\subset$ "Sedenions" $\subset$ $\ldots$  and that at each step you're given a multiplication table that tell how the elements interact. As you move up the ladder, certain "nice" properties are lost: ordering,  commutativity, associativity, multiplicative normedness, etc... Given the multiplication table, you can show that these properties don't hold.   Eric Naslund noted that "the first 4 are very special as they are the unique 4 normed division algebras over ℝ", no surprise then that these $2^n$-ions have found quite a bit of use. I'm interested in the sequence itself however, irrespective of how useful a $2^{256}$-ion might be (ducenti-quinquaginta-sex-ion?).   I feel like something deeper is going on here though that I don't understand. Why are these particular properties lost at each step? Is it possible to quantify the process such that, at the $2^n$-ion you can say something about the symmetry of the multiplication table*?  * I'm making an ansatz that there is a connection between the symmetry of the multiplication table and these "nice" properties. Why do polarized sunglasses remove (most) reflections on car windows?  I know that both lenses of polarized sunglasses are polarized in the same direction and I can see that reflections in my own windshield and the windows of other cars appear, disappear, or change depending on how I tilt my head, but why?  Why is the light in those reflections polarized?  edit: And why is most of the light in the various reflections on the interior of my own windshield and various windows/windshields at what seem like a variety of angles all polarized in a sufficiently narrow set of ways as to make polarized sunglasses work? How to clear the Skype chat history how clear the skype chat history ? Blender 2.8 : python code to switch shading mode (between wireframe and solid mode) If i switch between solid and wireframe mode, i can see in the info window that these commands are invoked :  bpy.data.screens["Layout"].shading.type = 'WIREFRAME' bpy.data.screens["Layout"].shading.type = 'SOLID'   Now i want to execute this command using python console. So i cut and paste the codes into python console but i got this error :   &gt;&gt;&gt; bpy.data.screens["Layout"].shading.type = 'WIREFRAME' Traceback (most recent call last):   File "&lt;blender_console&gt;", line 1, in &lt;module&gt; AttributeError: 'Screen' object has no attribute 'shading'  &gt;&gt;&gt; bpy.data.screens["Layout"].shading.type = 'SOLID' Traceback (most recent call last):   File "&lt;blender_console&gt;", line 1, in &lt;module&gt; AttributeError: 'Screen' object has no attribute 'shading'   Does anyone know why ? and what the correct script should i use in python console ?  Thanks What are Null Pointer Exceptions (java.lang.NullPointerException) and what causes them?  What methods/tools can be used to determine the cause so that you stop the exception from causing the program to terminate prematurely? number of subsets of even and odd Understanding shape and calculation of confidence bands in linear regression I am trying to understand the origin of the curved shaped of confidence bands associated with an OLS linear regression and how it relates to the confidence intervals of the regression parameters (slope and intercept), for example (using R):  require(visreg) fit &lt;- lm(Ozone ~ Solar.R,data=airquality) visreg(fit)     It appears that the band is related to the limits of the lines calculated with the 2.5% intercept, and the 97.5% slope, as well as with the 97.5% intercept, and the 2.5% slope (although not quite):  xnew &lt;- seq(0,400) int &lt;- confint(fit) lines(xnew, (int[1,2]+int[2,1]*xnew)) lines(xnew, (int[1,1]+int[2,2]*xnew))     What I don't understand are two things:   What about the combination of 2.5% slope &amp; 2.5% intercept as well as 97.5% slope and 97.5% intercept? These give lines that are clearly outside the band plotted above. Maybe I don't understand the meaning of a confidence interval, but if in 95%  of the cases my estimates are within the confidence interval, these seem like a possible outcome? What determines the minimum distance between the upper and lower limit (i.e. close to the point where the two lines added above intercept)?    I guess both questions arise because I don't know/understand how these bands are actually calculated.   How can I calculate the upper and lower limits using the confidence intervals of the regression parameters (without relying on predict() or a similar function, i.e. by hand)? I tried to decipher the predict.lm function in R, but the coding is beyond me. I'd appreciate any pointers towards relevant literature or explanations suitable for stats beginners.  Thanks. Does the ANSI standard mandate the logical operators to be short-circuited, in either C or C++?  I'm confused for I recall the K&amp;R book saying your code shouldn't depend on these operations being short circuited, for they may not. Could someone please point out where in the standard it's said logic ops are always short-circuited? I'm mostly interested on C++, an answer also for C would be great.  I also remember reading (can't remember where) that evaluation order isn't strictly defined, so your code shouldn't depend or assume functions within an expression would be executed in a specific order: by the end of a statement all referenced functions will have been called, but the compiler has freedom in selecting the most efficient order.  Does the standard indicate the evaluation order of this expression?  if( functionA() &amp;&amp; functionB() &amp;&amp; functionC() ) cout&lt;&lt;"Hello world"; RSA, DES, AES, etc., all use (relatively) complicated mathematics to encrypt some message with some key. For each of these methods, there have been several documented vulnerabilities found over the years. Some even believe that there is a vulnerability in AES known only to the NSA.  On the other hand, the one-time pad is not only ridiculously simple, but also has been shown to be impossible to crack (if used appropriately).  Say you have some message to be encrypted with length n. Simply generate a random string with length m where m is at least as large as n, and perform modular addition of the random string onto the message.  As long as the random string is generated with a high-enough-quality random number generator, and as long as the same one-time pad isn't reused, it should be impossible to crack.  If this is true, all we would need to perfect are fast, cryptographically secure deterministic random number generators. Use the key as a starting seed for the RNG and you have a powerful uncrackable encryption scheme which is simple to understand and implement.  Blum-Blum-Shub is a fast, cryptographically secure PRNG, and there are others too.  I have written a C++ program which uses two 2048-bit primes (which match the necessary criteria) for Blum-Blum-Shub and uses a password which the user enters - converted into a starting seed - to run byte-wise modular addition. The process is fast, deterministic, and if the literature I have read is correct then it should be very secure.  So why is so much time and effort invested in coming up with convoluted encryption cyphers when mathematics shows that the simplest is often the best?