Zulip Chat Archive

Stream: Is there code for X?

Topic: Cardinality of SpecialLinearGroup over a finite field


Rado Kirov (Oct 08 2025 at 06:37):

I see https://leanprover-community.github.io/mathlib4_docs/Mathlib/LinearAlgebra/Matrix/GeneralLinearGroup/Card.html#Matrix.card_GL_field

but can't seem to find the corresponding theorem for the SpecialLinearGroup.

Also, there are so many different cardinality functions Fintype.card, Nat.card, and others, which one is the canonical one to use for such theorems.

Kenny Lau (Oct 08 2025 at 06:39):

Nat.card doesn't use any instance so it avoids diamonds so it's "more general"

Kevin Buzzard (Oct 08 2025 at 09:26):

Nat.card works great for groups, because the junk answer 0 can only mean that the group is infinite, as every group has at least one element. It also makes a lot of theorems true in the infinite case e.g. "if GHG\subseteq H then order of GG divides order of HH" etc.


Last updated: Dec 20 2025 at 21:32 UTC