3.1 - pg 48, due January 19

This section wasn't too bad, although I was slightly confused trying to understand what the elements of a ring are. Are they congruence classes? Are they integers? Does it depend on the psecific ring you are working with?  It might seem silly but when I think "ring", I think "cirlce". Are the elements if a ring related to each other in some circular pattern?  In the book they had a lot of examples using matrices. So is a ring a matrix or is a matrix a ring? I think after a class discussion and finishing the section these things will be clearer.  I do think that it's nice that a ring is defined by the same axioms that exist in the integers and in Z_n. That was a relief. I understand those.