Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
In this paper we describe various techniques, some of which are already used by devotees of the art, which relate certain maximal subgroups of the Mathieu group M24, as seen in the MOG, to matrix groups over finite fields. We hope to bring out the wealth of algebraic structure underlying the device and to enable the reader to move freely between these matrices and permutations. Perhaps the MOG was mis-named as simply an “octad generator”; in this paper we intend to show that it is in reality a natural diagram of the binary Golay code.