Linear Algebra MAT26500, Spring 2011
Sections 15, 16

Important course information: (If you are enrolled in my section I expect you to look at all of this information in detail at the beginning of the semester and to consult it as necessay)
A syllabus. See also the main course webpage for ground rules.
Main course page , where you can find info about the assignments and projects. In particular I strongly suggest you read the ground rules and the assignment sheet.
For students with disabilities. If you may be entitled extra time to write midterms or quizzes please see the information on this sheet.
Some things:
Important Dates:
First midterm : Thursday 24 February at 8pm (in EE170) NOTE THE UNUSUAL TIME AND LOCATION
Update: the mean was roughly 18(/24), 75% scored higher than 15(/24), and 25% scored higher than about 21(/24)
Second midterm: Wednesday 6 April at 8pm (in EE170) NOTE THE UNUSUAL DAY, TIME, AND LOCATION
Update: the mean was roughly 12.3(/20), about 75% scored higher than about 9.5(/20), and about 25% scored higher than about 15.5(/20) ANSWERS
First quiz: Thursday 3 February, further quizzes to be announced.
UPDATE: The remaining quizzes will be held at the end of class on Thursday April 14, 21, and 28
Final exam You can find the date/time/location here. The final exam covers everything from day 1. It will be a multiple choice exam. (I think it is on Wed May 4 in Lambert - but check the link above for yourself!).
OFFICE HOURS FOR FINAL: I will hold office hours on Monday at 1pm and Tuesday 12:30pm-1:30pm (as would be usual)
All sections of MA26500 will write the exact same exam. The homework should give a good guide for what to practice. Also, you will find it quite useful to look at past exams for this course (some of which have multiple choice problems, quite similar to the exam we will write), which can be found following links from here ,
Assignments: Nearly all assignments will be done online using webassign. There will be a few problems you will need to complete and submit on paper, the details of which you can also find at webassign. For any hand-in assignments, make sure your assignment can be easily read and that pages are stapled. It is your responsibility to present your work clearly. The grader will not give credit to illegible assignments. You must also provide clear explanations; you might not receive full credit, even if you provide the correct answer, if the process by which you arrived at this answer is unclear.
Topics covered
Chapter 1 - Linear equations, the method of row reduction, matrices
Chapter 2 - . Properties of matrices and matrix algebra
Chapter 3 - Determinants
Chapter 4 - Abstract vector spaces
Chapter 5 - The inner product
Chapter 6 - Linear Transformations (we will only look at 6.1, unfortunately).
Chapter 7 - Spectral theory (a fancy name for the notions of eigenvalue and eigenvectors)
Chapter 8 - Application of spectral theory to ordinary differential equations
Here is a link to a colleague's "strategies" for linear algebra problems. You might find it to be a useful summary of the techniques we learn in this class.
First lecture (data) slideshow version
Some matlab files (I made these for octave so some adjustments might be necessary.) I wrote them to familiarize myself with matlab since I rarely use it, but they demonstrate some things you can do with just a little linear algebra... they are horribly inefficient and useless, but supped-up versions of some of these algorithms may be useful for certain applications.
Wikipedia's entry on matrix multiplication Note, for example, the fairly surprising fact that matrix multiplication can be computed in time O(n^2.8) (and at least in principle even faster).
here