Cycle notation

Imagine you have 5 toys that you want to line up in a particular order. But instead of writing down each individual toy and its position in the line, you come up with a shortcut. You use cycle notation, which means you group together toys that are next to each other in the line.

So for example, if you want to line up your toys in the order of "bear, dinosaur, truck, ball, car," you can use cycle notation to write it as:

(1 2)(2 3)(3 4)(4 5)

This might look confusing at first, but it's actually pretty simple. The first pair of numbers, (1 2), means that the first toy (bear) is in the first position and the second toy (dinosaur) is in the second position. The second pair of numbers, (2 3), means that the second toy (dinosaur) is in the second position and the third toy (truck) is in the third position. And so on for the rest of the pairs.

Overall, cycle notation is just a way to write down the order of things in a simpler and easier-to-read format. It's kind of like a secret code language for lining up your toys!