Customer Reviews

Linear Algebra: From the Beginning. For Scientist and Engineers

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I found this textbook to be absolutely terrible. The authors make all this hype about writing a clear and concise text when nothing could be further from the truth. The text is dense with extremely poor explanations of the material that seem buried in convoluted proofs that convey little understanding of the material. Since this book is supposed to be "from the beginning" it would seem more practical explanations would be needed to supplement and clarify the proofs. A more advanced mathematics student may find this book as a helpful reference, but the introductory linear algebra student (for whom this book is intended) will most likely be left confused and frustrated. Also this book contains many errors which certainly don't help and there are no answers in the back of the book for students to practice with. A student solutions manual is available but this is as dense and error filled as the text. My best advice is to avoid this text and buy another one like Anton's or Lay's Linear Algebra text.

Easily one of the worst textbooks ever written. I had to use some other works written by Professor Carlen in a few other classes and I highly recommend learning the course materials elsewhere if you are forced to read the text for your class. All of his texts read in the same confusing manner with little organization whatsoever. All the information is lumped into one massive text with little to no idea of organization, and backtracking through many many pages is necessary to learn any new concept. I get nightmares thinking about it.

Very smooth transaction, I received everything on time, even earlier than I expected. The book was in excellent condition. Thank you.