MATH6 — Linear Algebra

The math covered here is not incredibly challenging, but many of the concepts become fairly abstract which has the effect of making simple algebraic operations not so simple anymore.  Ever wanted to justify an answer for the vector x by selecting terse statements from a list of mathematical axioms?  Yes, you finally get to do that here!  After that feel free to entertain yourself further by finding the values for the variables y and z in a 5×5 matrix that form both bases for R5 and linearly dependent sets in R4.  (What is R5, you might be wondering?  It’s the set of real numbers that encompass the fifth dimension, of course!  R4 represents the fourth dimension which, while still very important, doesn’t have anything on the fifth dimension.)  By the way, all of this is supposed to sound much more impressive than it really is, but don’t tell anybody.

Linear Algebra was still a fun course, and among the more enjoyable Mathematics courses I have taken.  Constructing and then crunching matrices with a calculator is fun… doing it by hand, not so much (I felt like I was cheating when learned how quickly it would row reduce a matrix).  Unfortunately I avoided using my calculator on exams in the beginning of the course–a completely bizarre decision that must have somehow spilled over from my experiences in Calculus III, which I was also taking at the time. This caused me to lose a few points that I would have preferred to keep to help pad my grade before entering finals week.  Apparently I still have a few things to learn about being an effective test taker.

Exams

– Forthcoming