Author Description

Blue Collar Scholar makes yet another wonderful out of print textbook available to everyone at a price everyone can afford with this outstanding linear algebra text. Murdoch's book was one of the first linear algebra textbooks that tried to give a broad presentation for well-prepared sophomores or juniors of average ability which was both mathematically careful and rich in applications. It's beautifully written, thorough and very well organized. This book emphasizes the relationship between linear algebra and the Euclidean and analytic geometry of the plane (and via isomorphism, the complex plane C) and three dimensional space.Murdoch completely avoids abstract vector spaces in the main text by limiting the scalar fields to R and C. It allows a careful presentation of the subject without recourse to abstract algebra concepts in a familiar context most students at this level should have at least a passing acquaintance with.Chapter 1 begins with vector spaces and their elementary properties, all strictly over the fieldsand C. No essential structure is lost in this manner that cannot be omitted in an introduction and the generalization to abstract fields is presented briefly in an appendix. Although the book's overall emphasis is on linear transformations, Chapters 2 and 3 give a virtually complete presentation of the theory and application of linear systems of n variables, n x n matrices and determinants. In a concrete presentation, this is the natural way to go because most applications and calculations in linear algebra are done via operations on matrices i.e. linear transformations with a choice of basis. However, this actual relationship between linear transformations and matrices is not explored explicitly until later, after a great deal of experience is obtained manipulating matrices. This furnishes a great many specific examples and provides experience with calculations. Chapters 4 and 5 develop classical geometry, inner products and orthogonality, relations (c