Linear Algebra – Mathematical Association of America

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It was thirty years ago today …

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social This month marks the 30th anniversary of the MAA website you are looking at, which back then was a new members-service medium called MAA Online. “Devlin’s Angle” was one of the regular features from the getgo. Out of curiosity, when I was deciding what to write about for January 2026, I looked...

Getting Your Career into the Game

By Tim Chartier, Davidson College I’m a professor of mathematics and computer science who specializes in sports analytics. Professional teams and national media outlets call to get help from my students and me. Sound like a dream job? It is to me. But the best part isn’t the bright lights—it’s the everyday work of using...

Linear Algebra, Data Science, and Machine Learning

This introduction to modern methods of machine learning and data analysis is a mathematically rigorous and challenging but highly readable account with a remarkably wide scope. It is largely self-contained and accessible at the upper undergraduate level. The authors emphasize the importance of understanding the how and why their algorithms work, what they do, and...

Numerical Mathematics 3×9

This book presents an alternative standard first course in numerical analysis or “numerics” as the author calls it. It is subtitled “Three subject areas in 27 short chapters”. The author’s introduction emphasizes his intent to explore unexpected effects that arise in the course of developing numerical methods. The structure of the text suggest that is...

Cover of the book Numerical Mathematics: 3 x 9 by Sören Bartels, part of the UNITEXT series (volume 160),

Linear Algebra for the Sciences

The book under review is based on lecture notes from a course for first-semester science students at the University of Zurich. Compared to other introductory linear algebra textbooks addressed to broader audiences, this text is rather concise (the main text is less than 190 pages) and is written in a more formal style. Definitions and...

Cover of the book 'Linear Algebra for the Sciences' by Manuel Benz and Thomas Kappeler, published by Springer. The design features a blue and yellow gradient background with the text in white and yellow.

Linear Algebra in Action

The present book is intended for students with limited exposure to linear algebra, although mathematicians at any level can genuinely appreciate its content. The prerequisites encompass a foundation in real and complex vector spaces theory, coupled with some matrix theory and a modest familiarity with linear transformations. Indeed, the initial twelve chapters largely constitute the...

The Dark Art of Linear Algebra

I accepted the invitation to review this book in no small measure because of the title, which evoked, to me, images of Harry Potter. I suppose one should expect unusual titles in a book by Braver, who, after all, wrote another one titled Full Frontal Calculus. In any event, I was curious to see just what...

Introduction to Linear Algebra

Also see our review of the Fifth Edition. This Sixth Edition is an incremental update, but it doesn’t look that way at first glance (more about this later). The main differences are that the starting point has changed, from systems of linear equations in the Fifth Edition to “early vector spaces” in the Sixth Edition, and the applications are all...

The Oxford Linear Algebra for Scientists

Typically, when I see a phrase like “for scientists” in the title of a book, I immediately conclude that the book puts mathematical rigor on the back burner in favor of stressing applications from a computational “how to” point of view. It turns out, however, that that is not the case with the book now...

Tea Time Linear Algebra: Explorations in Mathematics

Recent years have seen the development of many open source mathematical texts. The American Institute of Mathematics, for instance, maintains a list of high quality open textbooks on their website. These open textbooks have many advantages over traditionally published texts. First and foremost, they are free. Secondly, while most are available as a downloadable PDF file, many...

Linear Algebra for Everyone

This book (hereafter LAFE) is not drastically different from the author’s standard textbook Introduction To Linear Algebra 5th edition (hereafter ILA), so I will give a brief review comparing them. Both books are texts for a first course in linear algebra. ILA is the text for MIT’s one-semester 18.06 Linear Algebra course, which covers about the first half of the book (roughly...

Analysis and Linear Algebra: The Singular Value Decomposition and Applications

Analysis and Linear Algebra: The Singular Value Decomposition and Applications is a text that offers a strong undergraduate or early graduate student an overview of the theory and application of the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). Along the way, it reminds the reader of the fundamental tools of analysis (such as inequalities, the use of compactness, and...

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