Tetrahedral Transformations

One of the great things that can happen in mathematics occurs when ideas in one discipline can be used to understand ideas in another. This Geometer's Corner will focus on one of these very useful relationships. Permutations are studied in most high school Algebra 2 or Pre-calculus courses as a useful combinatorics tool for counting arrangements where order matters. Symmetry operations are studied in some high school courses but mainly applied to plane figures such as triangles and other polygons. The last Geometer's Corner focused on the 6 symmetry operations for an equilateral triangle and showed that they form a group. This edition will focus on the symmetry operations for a regular tetrahedron and the permutations of 4 objects.