Lecture notes

My office hours are 12:30-1:30 on Mondays and Fridays. My office is PSB 304. You don’t need to make an appointment to stop in.

Full lecture notes - working draft

Tentative course schedule

Date Lecture Notes Topics Covered
2025-08-25 lecture-01 What is a linear system? And what does it mean to ‘solve’ a linear system?
2025-08-27 lecture-02 What do the solutions to a linear system look like?
2025-08-29 lecture-03 How can we solve a linear system without using subsitution?
2025-09-03 lecture-04 What is Gauss-Jordan elimination (AKA row reduction) and how can we use it to solve linear systems?
2025-09-05 lecture-05 What is a matrix, and what are the fundamental algebraic operations we can do with matrices?
2025-09-08 lecture-06 How do we encode a linear system using matrices? And once thus encoded, what can we say about the linear system just by looking at the matrix?
2025-09-10 lecture-07 What is a determinant, geometrically?
2025-09-12 lecture-08 What are the key properties of the matrix inverse?
2025-09-15 lecture-09 How do we understand (and compute) the determinant, algebraically?
2025-09-17 lecture-10 What are some useful connections between the geometric and algebraic interpretations of the determinant?
2025-09-19 lecture-11 What are the essential properties of vectors?
2025-09-22 lecture-12 What is a vector space?
2025-09-24 lecture-13 What do linear subspaces look like?
2025-09-26 lecture-14 How do we build a linear subspace from a set of vectors?
2025-09-29 lecture-15 How do we know if a linear system is minimal—i.e., that it doesn’t have any redundant equations?
2025-10-01 lecture-16 How do we build a vector space from a minimal set of vectors?
2025-10-03 lecture-17 Bases and dimension of a vector space
2025-10-06 lecture-18 What are the three fundamental subspaces associated with a matrix A?
2025-10-08 lecture-19 Examples of calculations of dimension and basis of fundamental subspaces
2025-10-10 lecture-20 What is a linear transformation?
2025-10-13 lecture-21 Is a basis all you need?
2025-10-15 lecture-22 Why do the row space and column space always have the same dimension?
2025-10-17 lecture-23 Why is matrix multiplication defined the way it is?
2025-10-20 lecture-24 How do we find a matrix to represent a linear transformation?
2025-10-22 lecture-25 The matrix we use to represent a linear transformation depends a choice of bases. How does it change when whe choose different bases?
2025-10-24 lecture-26 What do linear transformations of 2-dimensional space look like?
2025-10-27 lecture-27 What do linear transformations of 2-dimensional space look like?
2025-10-29 lecture-28 What are eigenvalues and eigenvectors and how do we find them?
2025-10-31 lecture-29 How to compute eigenvectors and eigenvalues?
2025-11-03 lecture-30 What can we say about two matrices that represent the same linear transformation?
2025-11-05 lecture-31 When is a matrix similar to a diagonal matrix?
2025-11-07 lecture-32 How can we test whether a matrix is diagonalizable?
2025-11-10 lecture-33 Jordan canonical form
2025-11-12 lecture-34 Multiplicity and an application of diagonalizability
2025-11-14 lecture-35 What are the eigenvectors of a rotation?
2025-11-17 lecture-36 Examples of systems of first order linear differential equations
2025-11-19 lecture-37 Examples of systems of first order linear differential equations
2025-11-21 none exam review
2025-11-26 lecture-38 The matrix exponential
2025-12-01 lecture-39 Sections 6.1, 6.2
2025-12-03 lecture-40 An application to biology: the Jukes Cantor Model
2025-12-05 lecture-41 What do solutions to Y’=AY look like?

The key theorem