Immersive Linear Algebra

‘A picture says more than a thousand words’ is a common expression, and for text books, it is often the case that a figure or an illustration can replace a large number of words as well. However, we believe that an interactive illustration can say even more, and that is why we have decided to build our linear algebra book around such illustrations. We believe that these figures make it easier and faster to digest and to learn linear algebra (which would be the case for many other mathematical books as well, for that matter). In addition, we have added some more features (e.g., popup windows for common linear algebra terms) to our book, and we believe that those features will make it easier and faster to read and understand as well.

After using linear algebra for 20 years times three persons, we were ready to write a linear algebra book that we think will make it substantially easier to learn and to teach linear algebra. In addition, the technology of mobile devices and web browsers have improved beyond a certain threshold, so that this book could be put together in a very novel and innovative way (we think). The idea is to start each chapter with an intuitive concrete example that practically shows how the math works using interactive illustrations. After that, the more formal math is introduced, and the concepts are generalized and sometimes made more abstract. We believe it is easier to understand the entire topic of linear algebra with a simple and concrete example cemented into the reader’s mind in the beginning of each chapter.