Customer Reviews

Linear Algebra Super Review

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The book is a nice compact summary to help me dust off my LA skills prior to PhD work. That complement said, I found three significant typos in the first chapter by working through about 1/3 of the examples. On page 40, the second step (starts "Divide the third row by -4...") the resulting matrix changed a 1 to 0 by accident in the second row (but changed it back in the next step). I'm pretty sure the answer for quiz question 6 (pg 45) isn't listed (I think it should be 2,-7,37,8), as verified both by hand and by Scientific Notebook. Likewise the answer to problem 7 should be "E", not "B" (come on! B is nonsense; It's not even in row echelon form!)

The book should be rigorously edited and an errata published on REA's web page. When I was an undergrad not being able to get the answer in the book would drive me in to depression. Study guide book publishers need to take better care.

Linear algebra has traditionally been the course in the undergraduate major where the transition from the "plug-and-chug" application of formulas to the development of proofs is made. Therefore, the subject matter naturally is composed of two rather distinct sections. This book is a review of the "plug-and-chug" section.
With that limitation in mind, the coverage is complete. The chapter headings are:

*) Linear matrices
*) Determinants
*) Vector spaces
*) Linear transformations
*) Eigenvalues and eigenvectors

Each chapter is split into appropriate subsections.
The subsections begin with a short segment of explanatory text with a large number of worked examples and ends with a short quiz. There are ten questions in each quiz and the format is multiple choice, solutions are included immediately after the quiz.
If your goal is to simply review the areas of linear algebra that are based on the execution of computational rules, then this is a good book. However, if you need some refreshment in the concept of proofs in the linear algebra context, then it will be of very limited value.