3 ms·

I bought the first edition of this book and I enjoyed a lot. Ivan, can you give those of us with the first edition a summary of the changes?

ivan_ah 10y ago
The "core material" is pretty much the same. It covers all the computational, geometric, and theoretical aspects of linear algebra as required for a first-year course. The main difference is the applications. Instead of one chapter, I expanded this part to three chapters that cover applications to chemistry, electronics, economics, optimization, probability theory, and even quantum mechanics. All of these sounds like fancy stuff, right? Actually they're simple applications of basic ideas of vectors and matrix operations, so it's quite easy to pick up once you learn LA. BTW, if you bought the book the pre-release version through gumroad, you have access to v2 as well. Check your email—I just sent out an update.
- soniman 10y ago
  You might want to sell a standalone "basic high school math" book and then devote more pages to linear algebra etc. I bought No BS Calc and Physics and while I liked the fact that both were taught together, I felt like some concepts were underexplained.
- shmerl 10y ago
  Do you plan to add one on graphics?
  - ivan_ah 10y ago
    There is already a section on computer graphics[1] that covers basic homogenous coordinates (instead of representing points as 3-vectors [x,y,z] you represent them as 4-vectors [x,y,z,1], which allows you do do translations and projections easily). I explain the math, but I'm not expert enough to talk about practical graphics topics like OpenGL / WebGL etc, so not sure how much further I can go. To merit the "NO BULLSHIT" label, it's really important that the author know the subject matter inside out ;) [1] https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSguide2LA_preview.pdf#page=109 https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSguide2LA_previ...
    - shmerl 10y ago
      Thanks! That looks good. I didn't mean any extensive chapter on OpenGL and the like, just some examples of linear algebra commonly used in computer graphics.

ivan_ah 10y ago

The "core material" is pretty much the same. It covers all the computational, geometric, and theoretical aspects of linear algebra as required for a first-year course. The main difference is the applications. Instead of one chapter, I expanded this part to three chapters that cover applications to chemistry, electronics, economics, optimization, probability theory, and even quantum mechanics. All of these sounds like fancy stuff, right? Actually they're simple applications of basic ideas of vectors and matrix operations, so it's quite easy to pick up once you learn LA. BTW, if you bought the book the pre-release version through gumroad, you have access to v2 as well. Check your email—I just sent out an update.

soniman 10y ago
You might want to sell a standalone "basic high school math" book and then devote more pages to linear algebra etc. I bought No BS Calc and Physics and while I liked the fact that both were taught together, I felt like some concepts were underexplained.
shmerl 10y ago
Do you plan to add one on graphics?
- ivan_ah 10y ago
  There is already a section on computer graphics[1] that covers basic homogenous coordinates (instead of representing points as 3-vectors [x,y,z] you represent them as 4-vectors [x,y,z,1], which allows you do do translations and projections easily). I explain the math, but I'm not expert enough to talk about practical graphics topics like OpenGL / WebGL etc, so not sure how much further I can go. To merit the "NO BULLSHIT" label, it's really important that the author know the subject matter inside out ;) [1] https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSguide2LA_preview.pdf#page=109 https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSguide2LA_previ...
  - shmerl 10y ago
    Thanks! That looks good. I didn't mean any extensive chapter on OpenGL and the like, just some examples of linear algebra commonly used in computer graphics.