Customer Reviews

Lecture Notes in Linear Algebra

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There are many typos in this book. However, I really like the approach. I rate this as an exellent text.

Obviously the reviewer above is one of the students who did not get a good grade in the course. It is true that there are a few typos in these lecture notes. However, the book was made available to the students for free!

It is also true that there are not many pictures and diagrams in these notes. These lecture notes never claim to be any of that or to replace any of the commercial linear algebra books on the market. They are directed to the mathematics and science majors who know how to read and understand basic mathematics. Obviously the previous reader was not one of those students.

Many proofs are skipped or left as exercises. If there are mistakes in the proofs, or if there are theorems stated wrong as claimed we definitely would like to know.

We would suggest these notes to the math oriented undergraduate student. They will be introduced to certain things in linear algebra that otherwise will not see until the graduate level courses. Please get the second edition as many typos of the first edition are corrected.

This book is filled with errors. There are legitimate mathematical errors in not just examples, but also proofs. There are proofs restated in the book that state completing different meanings. Most theorem proofs are left as an exercise to the reader. This does nothing in the way of challenging the reader, but rather it simply frustrates them. Combined with the lack of a solution manual, successfully completing the text's exercises requires heavy reliance on external supplemental resources. This book is very theoretically oriented and written almost exclusively in mathematical notation found in higher level undergraduate and graduate texts. The book lacks narration and graphics that most students are accustomed to from most calculus textbooks. Also, it offers little in the way of transitioning students from the intuitive mass produced textbooks to higher level texts with less narration and more mathematical short hand. On the positive side, the text had some clever and challenging exercises (although lacked solution manual), but that's about it. Overall, this is probably the worst academic text I've ever worked with. I doubt the text was peer reviewed. I would never recommend the use of the text to anyone.