Show that the identity permutation cannot be expressed as the product of an odd number of transpositions.   For example consider the example of $S_3,$ $\sigma_{id} = (123)(321) = (1 2) (13)(32)(31)$, which means even number of permutations.  In general let $\sigma_{id}= \sigma_1.\sigma_1\cdots \sigma_k $, I need to show if I rewrite each $\sigma_i$ as transpositions then  odd number of transpositions will be there.  Thank You.
Theorem. If the identity is written as the product of $r$ transpositions, $id=τ_1τ_2\dots τ_r$, then $r$ is an even number. Proof. We will employ induction on $r$. A transposition cannot be the identity; hence, $r &gt; 1$. If $r = 2$, then we are done. Suppose that $r &gt; 2$. In this case the product of the last two transpositions, $τ_{r−1}τ_r$, must be one of the following cases: $(ab)(ab) = id\\ (bc)(ab) = (ac)(bc)\\ (cd)(ab) = (ab)(cd)\\ (ac)(ab) = (ab)(bc),$ where $a$, $b$, $c$, and $d$ are distinct. The first equation simply says that a transposition is its own inverse. If this case occurs, delete $τ_{r−1} τ_r$ from the product to obtain $id=τ_1τ_2···τ_{r−3}τ_{r−2}$. By induction $r − 2$ is even; hence, $r$ must be even. In each of the other three cases, we can replace $τ_{r−1} τ_r$ with the right-hand side of the corresponding equation to obtain a new product of $r$ transpositions for the identity. In this new product the last occurrence of $a$ will be in the next-to-the-last transposition. We can continue this process with $τ_{r−2} τ_{r−1}$ to obtain either a product of $r − 2$ transpositions or a new product of $r$ transpositions where the last occurrence of $a$ is in $τ_{r−2}$. If the identity is the product of $r − 2$ transpositions, then again we are done, by our induction hypothesis; otherwise, we will repeat the procedure with $τ_{r−3}τ_{r−2}$. At some point either we will have two adjacent, identical transpositions canceling each other out or $a$ will be shuffled so that it will appear only in the first transposition. However, the latter case cannot occur, because the identity would not fix $a$ in this instance. Therefore, the identity permutation must be the product of $r − 2$ transpositions and, again by our induction hypothesis, we are done. Question: That is the proof written in the book, but unfortunately after more than $10$ times reading I don't understand the last two paragraph (i.e., from &quot;In each of the other three cases&quot;). Is there another simpler proof or could someone please clarify what is going on? Thank you.
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So to store the point $(X,Y)$ now, we shift $X$ ridding of its most significant bit and add $1$ if the $Y$ point is odd. Therefore, one can think of the compressed point being $2 \cdot X+B$ ($B$ is the bit we added to tell if $Y$ was odd or even) since the multiplication by $2$ is implied because of the shift. I understand this completely. It's recovering the original point that has me confused.  Since a point on the curve is given by the equation $y^2=x^3+ax+b$, we can find square roots officially in $\mathrm{GF}(p)$. The following from my spec is what confuses me.  If $p$ is prime and congruent to $3$ mod $4$, one of its square roots is $z^{(p+1)/4} \bmod p$ and the other is $p-z^{(p+1)/4} \bmod p$. How would I solve this? What is $z$?  For example, I know how to extract the $x$ point so let's say I simplify the right side of the equation to be $7$ and $p$ is $11$. Would I be trying to solve for the square root that's equal to $7$ mod $11$? Oven temperature for multiple ducks? 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I've already see a  by Marko Riedel which I list it follows:     The standard way to treat these sums is to integrate   $$ f(z) = \frac{1}{(z+\alpha)^2} \pi \cot(\pi z)$$   along a contour consisting of a circle of radius $R$ and with $R$ going to infinity and hence being larger than $\alpha$, where the circle does not pass through the poles on the real axis.   Now along the semicircle in the upper half plane we have   $$|f(z)| \le \frac{1}{(R-|\alpha|)^2}\pi \left|\frac{e^{i\pi R\exp(i\theta)} + e^{-i\pi R\exp(i\theta)}} {e^{i\pi R\exp(i\theta)} - e^{-i\pi R\exp(i\theta)}}\right|= \frac{1}{(R-|\alpha|)^2} \pi  \left|\frac{e^{2i\pi R\exp(i\theta)}+1}{e^{2i\pi R\exp(i\theta)}-1}\right| &lt; \frac{1}{(R-|\alpha|)^2} \pi   \frac{1+e^{-2\pi R\sin(\theta)}e^{2i\pi R\cos(\theta)}} {1-e^{-2\pi R\sin(\theta)}e^{2i\pi R\cos(\theta)}}$$   This last term is clearly $O(1/R^2)$ as $R$ goes to infinity as the quotient of the two exponentials goes to one since $\exp(-R)$ vanishes and there is no singularity when $\theta = 0$ or $\theta = \pi$ as $R\cos\theta = \pm R$, which is not an integer by the assumption that the circle avoids the poles and hence cannot be one.     My question: It is clear that for each $z=Re^{i \theta}$ , $f(z)=O(1/R^2)$ ，but can this guarantee that the last term on RHS is uniform bounded ? 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