HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Strang has another great book, Linear Algebra and its Applications: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Applications-Gilbert-St... Everything I know about linear algebra I learned from this book.

⬐ seanharnett

Seconded. I'm an applied math PhD student (optimization) and I use linear algebra constantly. This book taught me everything.

⬐ m0nastic

Thirded. We used an earlier edition at my school for Linear Algebra, and in spite of having a Professor who was retiring at the end of the class (complete with "I'm getting too old for this shit" demeanor), the book was approachable enough for us to get by.

⬐ cop359

A slightly more advance books which I love is: Matrix Analysis and Applied Linear Algebra by Carl Meyer. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0898714540

You can find a free PDF version online.

I like it more then Strang because it's a lot more concise, covers some more advanced topics and unlike Strang everything is said very accurately. I think Strang's rather hand-wavy way of explaining things starts faltering when he talks about more advance topics.

I would read Strang and listen to his lectures to get a good feel for Linear Algebra (to build up the intuition), and if you feel like you want more then pick up Meyer's book

The Strang book is pretty much indispensable, I think.

http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Applications-Gilbert-St...

The course lectures are online, too.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-06Spring-2005/Video...

I've been taking courses related to Machine Learning, and never having taken a Linear Algebra course, I find myself going to this text and watching these lectures a lot to bring myself up to speed.

My favorite text on Linear Algebra is Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra and Its Applications although the current edition is ridiculously expensive:

http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Applications-Gilbert-St...

⬐ uuilly

We used Strang for Linear Algebra. It was the only math class in college I did badly in. I tried multiple times to understand linear algebra and every time I ended up at the picture in the first few pages of the book. Each page built upon the previous page and there were no pictures to anchor on.

A year later I took an OpenGL class then a grad class in Computational Geometry. Once I had pictures and application I was fine. Morphing space and w/ matrix transformations and drawing in it in OpenGL was all I needed to snap the semester of symbol manipulation into focus. Strang to me was like man pages. Great for reference, terrible for learning.

⬐ jimbokun

I managed to find an older version of the book, but somehow still unused, for a much lower price. I haven't found anything missing yet that I really need to know. I'm sure Linear Algebra as a field of knowledge has advanced a lot in that time, but the basics are still the basics.

I bought it because I checked several Linear Algebra books out from the university library, including an even older version of Strang's, and found that I liked it far more than the rest. Good transitioning between motivation, explanation, proofs, and examples for each topic. Also, it follows the on-line Strang lectures.