Linear Algebra

Rating:
Summary: Oh, NOW I get it....
Review: After wading through wordy and inconsistent explanations, typo after typo, and the scant, incomplete examples in Lawson's text, I finally went out and bought Schaum's Outlines of Linear Algebra.
Now I finally understand what I've been doing this past semester: Supporting the Lawson Retirement Fund. I can't see any other reason this text would have been recommended for a Linear Algebra class.
If someone you know has this book on his textbook shopping list for next semester, grab a hold of him, shake him violently, and convince him to use an alternate text. For the love of god.

Rating:
Summary: Class notes.
Review: I was one of Terry Lawson's mathematics students at Tulane (where this book is known to be burned or disposed of in creative ways regularly by students at semester's end), albeit not in his Linear Algebra class. (Professor Kalka taught my linear algebra class and, yes, we did use this book.) Hence, I was able to get a bit of perspective on this text from the author.

Linear Algebra is the result of a compromise. At Tulane, only one course in undergraduate linear algebra is offered. The mathematicians and quantum physicists thus have to take the same course as the engineers. This necessitated more focus on computation and manipulation of matrices than in a traditional class for mathematicians, and more focus on "real" linear algebra than in a typical engineering class. No text existed at the time which bridged the math/engineering gap; Lawson's class was taught from xeroxed notes until they were published it book form.

In my opinion, this is a failed compromise. The mathematical content is obscured by all of the matrices and worked examples. The tensor product and most higher geometrical algebra is omitted. Many pages are devoted to circuits, yet none are given over to the basic formalism of quantum mechanics and so strong is the emphasis on matrices that little space is devoted to the manipulation of general linear operators. Additionally, it doesn't seem like the book was intended to be read--there is no flow, and Lawson gives no sense of what is important or why; theorems are given, proved, and then barely discussed.

However, it does have its strong points. Perhaps in order to make it accessible to first or second year engineering students who couldn't care less, the math is written at such an elementary level that, when used as a reference, this book has a clarifying effect. Additionally, the chapter on digraph theory and the Leontief input-output method was interesting and clearly written. Perhaps the strongest aspect of this book is the MATLAB examples book written to accompany it; the exercises were most enlightening.

Overall, this book is a dud--class notes in overglorified form--but you may find a used copy a handy thing to keep on the bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Linear Algebra for Dummies
Review: It's too late for me, kids. I failed Linear Algebra, thanks in no small part to Professor Lawson's brilliantly absent-minded adventure to the depths of a kingdom of linear algebra. I bought the book as a requirement for the class. Now I will admit that Prof. Lawson kept it real with the phat 3D triangle art, but that's the only part of the book I understood. On page 35 there is this wicked diagram of some intersecting hyper-planes, but little did I know that the diagram was mislabelled because as we all come to know in linear algebra, when the number of linear equations is equal to the numberof unknowns in those equations, and if the rank of A equals the number of equations, then the system has infinite solutions, not a single one as indicated by the intersecting planes. Poor bastards.