Linear Algebra and Its Applications: Amazon.ca: Strang Strang: Books

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Book Description

Renowned professor and author Gilbert Strang demonstrates that linear algebra is a fascinating subject by showing both its beauty and value. While the mathematics is there, the effort is not all concentrated on proofs. Strang's emphasis is on understanding. He explains concepts, rather than deduces. This book is written in an informal and personal style and teaches real mathematics. The gears change in Chapter 2 as students reach the introduction of vector spaces. Throughout the book, the theory is motivated and reinforced by genuine applications, allowing pure mathematicians to teach applied mathematics.

About the Author

Gilbert Strang is Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College. He was an undergraduate at MIT and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. His doctorate was from UCLA and since then he has taught at MIT. He has been a Sloan Fellow and a Fairchild Scholar and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Strang has published a monograph with George Fix, "An Analysis of the Finite Element Method", and has authored six widely used textbooks. He served as President of SIAM during 1999 and 2000 and he is Chair of the U.S. National Committee on Mathematics for 2003-2004. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

51 Reviews

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(17)

Average Customer Review

3.1 out of 5 stars (51 customer reviews)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight not rigor, Jun 6 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Linear Algebra and Its Applications (Hardcover)

This book seems to have evoked a wide range of emotional responses - unusual for a technical book. I am an analyst at a major aerospace company and have found it to provide tremendous insight into the real world problems while providing the mathematical tools for a broad range of problems. If you are a mathematician looking for rigor, then you need to go elsewhere as this book provides a conversational approach versus a theorem-proof approach. If doing it for self-study, make sure and work the problems as it introduces you to new areas for further study.

Before this book, I found the subject of linear algebra to be dry and lacking any interest due to the manner it was presented. It is actually one of the most interesting and directly applicable areas for an industrial mathematician to have as a background. Having steered several fellow workers to this book, I have consistently received positive feedback as to it's content. Another book I can recommend with a similar style is "The variational Principles of Mechanics" by Lanczos.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The right thing for engineers, Mar 27 2002

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Dimitris Symeonidis (Thessaloniki, Greece) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Linear Algebra and Its Applications (Hardcover)

I agree. This is a great book to really learn linear algebra from. Especially for engineers, who are more interested in the "essence" of the subject, rather than the strict mathematical proofs and definitions.

I have studied the book 4 years after studying linear algebra from a purely mathematical textbook, and I am not ashamed to say I realized my ignorance! Through this book I really learned what linear algebra really is about.

I gained what you can call "intuition" in the matter, thus being able to predict the result of a problem without explicitely solving it.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book!, Jan 1 2003

By

"venkv" (Stanford,CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Linear Algebra and Its Applications (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book...I used it for a course I took on Linear Algebra and I found the treatment of the subject insightful and interesting. The coverage of spaces and eigen values is particularly good. This is a good book to supplement class lectures, though not the best for self-study. The exercises are good and serve to gain an in-depth understanding of the subject matter.

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Most recent customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible Textbook
Linear Algebra is very abstract and should not digress from a formal way of teaching it. The problems in this book ask vague questions that waste much of your time trying to... Read more

Published on Oct 12 2007 by Daniel

2.0 out of 5 stars Casual presentation is amusing but not instructive
This book was the text for my 2nd-year linear algebra course at university. Recently I opened it again to do some review and remembered why I'd hated it so much in the first... Read more

Published on May 23 2006 by D. Macdonald