Hello everyone,

As you are reading this, the semester has started and I am very excited to start talking about linear algebra with you. Before I start telling you about what we will do in the first two weeks, I want to tell you a little bit about this course.

The computation aspect of this course is pretty straightforward. However, it requires a very disciplined work to become fluent in these computations. Most of the computation tools you need to learn will be learned in the first two weeks of the course. Therefore, I have decided that I am going to let you learn these techniques on your own pace and time during the first two weeks. After the two weeks, we will start synchronous lectures. During the synchronous lectures, we will mostly learn a language (in fact several languages) in which we use these computations as tools. For several weeks, we will learn the same ideas in different languages (systems of linear equations, vector equations, matrix vector equations, linear transformations etc). This will be the difficult part, to convert from one language to the other. The computation part will be (almost exactly) the same in all languages.

What should you do:

1. This video I made last semester.
2. You should watch my videos from the Fall 2020 semester - first three lectures.
3. You should watch Tom Roby's YouTube lectures. In this playlist, you must watch the first five videos (up to an including E4- Reduced Row Echelon Form).
4. You should read the corresponding chapters from the book.
5. Meet and discuss with your group members.
6. Check the blog questions and answer them as a group.

Your goal:

At the end of the 2 weeks, you should learn

1. Why we do linear algebra
2. How to do row reduction
3. What is an echelon form/reduced row echelon form
4. How to tell dependent/independent variables