[r-t] Group Theory again

[David Greenaway]

On 14 February 2013 08:53, Robin Woolley <robin at robinw.org.uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Today's request for help: I get the impression that, given two subgroups, it is  a non-trivial problem to find the smallest subgroup containing both. Is this correct?

In general, I think so, but for small groups it's sometimes easy to
see what's happening (as RAS points out). For moderate groups I would
probably use a symbolic maths package. A little googling finds
http://www.sagemath.org/doc/reference/sage/groups/perm_gps/permgroup_element.html
I've not used sage, but from these examples is seems quite capable.

David