About This Course

Linear algebra is one of the major areas of mathematics with applications to… practically everything (sciences, computer science, engineering, data analytics, economics, statistics, etc.). We will explore some of these applications during the semester.

What should be easy about this course

One reason why linear algebra is useful is that (a) most phenomena in the world, whilst they’re definitely not linear, can be well approximated by linear behaviour, and (b) linear problems are computationally fairly easy. What this means in practice is that you will likely find the computations in this course simpler than the ones you have encountered in e.g. calculus classes.

What may be harder

Whilst the computations may be fairly easy, we will also explore the theory underpinning these calculations in this course. Understanding the concepts is crucial for any seriously interesting application, and this is usually the more difficult aspect of linear algebra courses.

Why we will use computers in this course

Calculating things by hand is very useful when learning linear algebra, but in almost all applications the amount of data is far too large to compute anything by hand (especially in a timely manner and without mistakes). Typically, one uses conceptual knowledge to set up a problem and in order to interpret its solution, but the computations are handled by computers. The point of computers in this course is to reflect this reality and to teach some practical skills.