<story><title>Fundamentals of Linear Algebra and Optimization [pdf]</title><url>http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis515/linalg.pdf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>SonOfLilit</author><text>My test for linear algebra books is how they first present matrices and matrix multiplication.&lt;p&gt;If they define a matrix as an NxM table of numbers with a multiplication operation defined as this complicated formula with a couple of nested sigmas, and then much later a lemma is mentioned that says every linear transformation can be represented as a matrix and then the composition of two transforms is the matrix multiplication of their matrix forms, I throw the book away in disgust. I throw most books away in disgust.&lt;p&gt;This is the second book I&amp;#x27;ve seen that does it right, but unlike the other one [1] this one wraps the very correct presentation of matrices in so much technical language and such a boring cover story that I almost threw it away in disgust anyway.&lt;p&gt;My greatest wish in STEM education is that we teach linear algebra better. It&amp;#x27;s such low hanging fruit and could change so much!&lt;p&gt;[1] which I saw linked in HN a year ago and don&amp;#x27;t remember the name of, but it was something like &amp;quot;linear algebra taught the correct way&amp;quot; and was apparently well known in the States so ask your friends</text></comment>
<story><title>Fundamentals of Linear Algebra and Optimization [pdf]</title><url>http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis515/linalg.pdf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jacobolus</author><text>Folks looking for introductory books in this area may also enjoy this new in-progress book: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.stanford.edu&amp;#x2F;~boyd&amp;#x2F;vmls&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.stanford.edu&amp;#x2F;~boyd&amp;#x2F;vmls&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a follow-up I would recommend Trefethen &amp;amp; Bau, &lt;i&gt;Numerical Linear Algebra&lt;/i&gt;.</text></comment>