While that's not an inaccurate representation, I think "just" translating the math to Octave/MATLAB's pretty powerful vector algebra language isn't as trivial a

While that's not an inaccurate representation, I think "just" translating the math to Octave/MATLAB's pretty powerful vector algebra language isn't as trivial as you seem to find it. I've had some seriously epiphanic moments. For me, at least, this class is striking a pretty good balance. Although I've been struck by the fact that they expect most people to do loop iteration until forced into vectorized concepts - I've been forcing myself to do it all as linear algebra from the start, as that's what I see as the point of the class.