I'm studying Lie groups and I am in trouble with finding lie algebras of the classical groups. How can I calculate $\mathfrak{sp}(n,\mathbb{C})$ or $\mathfrak{so}(n,\mathbb{R})$ using exp map and tangent space of these groups?
Given a Lie group, how are you meant to find its Lie algebra?  The Lie algebra of a Lie group is the set of all the left invariant vector fields, but how would you determine them?  My group is the set of all affine maps $x \rightarrow A.x+v$ from $R^n$ to $R^n$ under function composition.
I'm trying to understand an algorithm that tries to map points from a lie group to its lie algebra using the exponential map. The background is the representation of 3d coordinate transformations as a lie group.  I can imagine, how one can map points on a manifold (eg a sphere) to the tangent space (tangent plane) at some point x on the sphere. I can imagine to create the tangent space by computing derivatives at that point x. But I cannot imagine how the exponential of some matrix is giving me that tangent space?  How can I envision the exponential of a matrix? Is there some picture or analogy I can use as intuition?