Customer Reviews

Matrices and Linear Algebra (Dover Books on Mathematics)

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

 

 

This book is a bargain! Do a search on linear algebra and see what comes up; then look at the prices!

This book is a well written exposition of the usual topics one finds in the typical introduction to linear algebra textbook...except at 10% of the price. That in itself is a serious motivation to consider this book -> saving $90 on a book is not to be sneezed at.

OK the book is a dover...that means it's concise, compact, nothing fancy and not overly modern...but that's ok. When you're dealing with the fundementals you don't have to be at the cutting edge. But what you must have is a strong, confusion free understanding of these fundementals. And this book delivers. The proofs are simple and straighforward for the most part (if not terribly expansive) and you should be able to follow them. There are solutions (not worked) for many of the exerices in the book (calcultions type questions, not proofs however). The content can be seen by using the looking inside the book feature.

I have both elementary alegebra by howard anton and this book, and truth be told, I can't see why the price is so different. Anton doesn't give you that much more. I would suggest however that you purchase this is a supplement to your class text (if your lecturer sets work from it), however if you want to do some self-study or brush-up then this little book is perfect (easy to carry too!)

In fact for this book and the linear algebra problem solver (isbn 0878915184), you're looking at $33.50 and between them they cover a large amount of linear algebra. And you're still $82 dollars ahead of ELementary Linear algebra (isbn 0471170550) by anton!

So, in all, an excellent, well-written little book. Fantastic price. It's easy to follow and learn from and covers most if not all (depending on your lecturer) of a first course in linear algebra (check the table of contents!). Even has end of chapter quizzes, with answers (10 true/false, 5 multiple choice questions) So check it out! What's $12, really? That'll get you 1/10 of the Anton book but all of this!

As a physics major, i've been told by my E & M teacher that Linear Algebra is one of the two games to be played in physics. (The other naturally being calculus). So, what happens when it comes time to take Linear Algebra and the teacher only serves to confuse the material, and the college textbook is a normal college math book? (a.k.a. not well written or useful). Get Dover books. And this book delivers for me. Everything i'm supposed to learn in Shifrin's text is presented here with much clearer writing. (Especially in drawing your eye to the thereoms, any one who wants to Linear Algebra without knowing the thereoms or applying them to the homework should probably stop now and go back to Trig.) It seems this book would make a good stand alone text, provided you are willing to not expect calculus cookbookness, because it's my side text that trumps my main textbook for 1/10th the price. And in closing, thank God for Dover for making life as a physics major that much cheaper.

First, the text of this book is extremely well-written, the theorems are clearly stated and the proofs are well-presented. Unfortunately, there are LOADS of typos in this book, but that doesn't bother me.

What bothers me are the exercises at the end of each section - the difficulty level of several (not all) of them is far beyond the depth of the text. The text is supposed to be for "undergraduates with little mathematical experience". Don't you believe it. There are problems early in the book that ask you to write proofs that require a depth of understanding that the text does not come close to providing. Many times I was absolutely convinced that the text and the exercises were from completely different textbooks! If the author is going to include difficult or "let's see how well you got this" problems I'm all for it, but at least include some hints in the back to help students get started. Otherwise you're just stranded on your lonely little mathematical island....hungry and cold and completely screwed.

If you just want a book for reference, then this is a very good choice. However, if you are attempting to learn the material and are interested in trying your hand at more than a few problems then I strongly suggest you look elsewhere.

On my desk right now, books by: David C. Lay, Terry Lawson, Sheldon Axler, Klaus Jänich, Robert Valenza, and this one by Schneider and Barker. I tend to go back again and again here.
I'm using this book as a supplement for the textbook in my class. Some of the books cited above don't quite fit the bill because they're so different from the linear algebra for engineering you so often see in classes. But this one is excellent for a matrix-heavy approach.
This book is "bare bones", indeed, but it is very well written. Some might not be used to definitions, propositions, theorems and lemmas but in this case this makes it a whole lot easier for finding (and referencing) the important results. The notation is careful and formal, but the explanations are crystal clear. On the back cover it says it's geared towards students "outside the field of mathematics" but I think they say that because it avoids a purely algebraic approach (like in Valenza where e.g. Ker is defined in the context of group homomorphism). The approach is the one of matrixes, matrixes everywhere (row echelon algorithm, etc.) There are, however, no "modern" applications (such as networks, or ecology) as examples.
Another reviewer complained about the difficulty in exercises. While you have "drill" ones, you do have more conceptual ones, but I think they're on par with the text. There are no pretty illustrations here, and you will see that you don't need them.
In some other books, material might be presented in a wordy manner, but in this book, you just say "ah, so what so-and-so is saying is just Theorem number X.X.X in S&B."
On the whole, this is an excellent acquisition for your undergraduate library. It is cheap and good. What more do you want?

very good i like it. it is really good. I would like to recommend it to other people who like it

This is not a flashy book. You will not see a lot of fancy symbols, pictures or equations. What you will get is pages upon pages upon pages of matrices.

I worked through all of this book in about four months. It's real strength is that it teaches you the nuts and bolts of concrete matrix machinery: Gaussian elimination, matrix inversion, taking determinants, constructing a basis, extracting eigenvalues and eigenvectors, calculating functions of matrices and orthonormalization. Along the way you will learn a little about linear operators, but only a little. If you intend to do something with your mathematics though (as I intend to do physics) this stuff is important and is skimped in some of the more abstract texts. The proofs are short and easy to follow, a blessing for someone who is not mathematically gifted. There is also a lot of examples, a blessing for someone who is working alone.

A warning, the authors heavy matrix approach doesn't seem adequate in the chapter on inner products. I got comfortable with all of the definitions and algorithms that go into it, but I was always iffy on proving anything, as if I was missing something. Maybe the approach just wasn't good for me.

A further warning, you better be ready to do some hard core arithmetic. The problems get longer and longer when you work by hand and if you are prone to arithmetical errors (as I am) you can find yourself spending days on simple problems. It gets tiresome, but it comes with the territory.

In sum, highly recommended for what it does. I'm now ready to take on Axler and Shilov.

Schneider and Barker's book is a very nice reference for those who are already familiar with matrix manipulations and linear algebra. It is certainly written for the pure mathematician rather than for the scientist or engineer. The book is little more than a 400-page series of theorems and proofs, which, although logically and clearly presented, makes for a text that is neither enjoyable to read nor readily accessible to the uninitiated. This book will stay on my shelf as a reference; however, if your primary interest is real-world application of the treated material, you should probably find a friendlier text.

This is the text book for a linear Algebra class and I really wish I dropped the class because of the book. It's not student friendly because of poor and incomplete discussion of the subject and slim to no examples in the book wit few exercises and even less answers in the back. The book is cheap at around 16.00 but that is to high of a price for poor presentation of the material.

this book is terrible, it's confusing and lack of explaination, i recommand u to get the Linear Algebra and it's application by Davie C. Lay

For about three years, I haven't thought about linear algebra at all. But recently, I've been interested in it again, and went to this book for reference.

I'm lucky if I can find one nice clear example of anything in this book. This is a proof book all the way, and it's not for your general type of audience. This is bare bones stuff. That's probably why the price is 14 bucks instead of 140.

Instead of getting a book like this, I recommend getting a more expensive book that's easier to understand, or just surf the internet for information. I have had some success with the latter option.