On induced permutation matrices and the symmetric group

Abstract

The n! operations Ai of permutations upon n different ordered symbols correspond to n! matrices Ai of the nth order, which have in each row and in each column only one non-zero element, namely a unit. Such matrices Ai are called permutation matrices, since their effect in premultiplying an arbitrary column vector x = {x1x2….xn} is to impress the permutation Ai upon the elements xi. For example the six matrices of the third orderare permutation matrices. It is convenient to denote them bywhere the bracketed indices refer to the permutations of natural order. Clearly the relation Ai Aj = Ak entails the matrix relation AiAj = Ak; in other words, the n! matrices Ai, give a matrix representation of the symmetric group of order n!.