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Strang's “Linear Algebra and Learning from Data” is printed and available

math.mit.edu

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Re: Strang's “Linear Algebra and Learning from Data” is printed and available

#11

Post by jimbokun »

Just from the title, this is a book I want to buy.

I had to rapidly teach myself Linear Algebra to get through some machine learning graduate courses, and Strang's book and video lectures saved me. He has a very special talent for making complex material understandable without dumbing it down. He's up there with Norvig and Feynman for me in terms of teaching talent.

That man with a piece of chalk and a big chalkboard beats any PowerPoint presentation or video presentation using animation and whatever other technological helps you can think of.

Re: Strang's “Linear Algebra and Learning from Data” is printed and available

#12

Post by a-dub »

I've never seen his lectures, but I've used one of his books for a course and have leafed through another.

I have to be honest, I never have understood why everyone loves his texts so much. I always felt that they were lacking in practical applications (even the Linear Algebra with Applications version) and that a lot of the ideas were not immediately clear when presented in his writing style. It often seemed that ideas and definitions would be thrown out with not much connection to why they were interesting. (Although I suppose this can be said of many math courses).

I suppose the thing is, with this stuff, there are lots of really interesting applications. I think I would have preferred something that started with the applications and then worked backwards. Maybe this book is an improvement? I'd like to check it out.

The exercises also didn't seem particularly enlightening, I just remember doing lots of rote things like LU factorization by doing Gauss elimination by hand.

Re: Strang's “Linear Algebra and Learning from Data” is printed and available

#13

Post by mesaframe »

a-dub wrote: post #12

I've never seen his lectures, but I've used one of his books for a course and have leafed through another. I have to be honest, I never have understood why everyone loves his texts so much. I always felt that they were lacking in practical applications (even the Linear Algebra with Applications version) and that a lot of the ideas were not immediately clear when presented in his writing style. It often seemed that id…

His book doesn't make much sense if you haven't seen his lectures.

Re: Strang's “Linear Algebra and Learning from Data” is printed and available

#14

Post by gballan »

a-dub wrote: post #12

I've never seen his lectures, but I've used one of his books for a course and have leafed through another. I have to be honest, I never have understood why everyone loves his texts so much. I always felt that they were lacking in practical applications (even the Linear Algebra with Applications version) and that a lot of the ideas were not immediately clear when presented in his writing style. It often seemed that id…

Perhaps "Computational Science and Engineering" is a better fit for you?

http://math.mit.edu/~gs/cse/

Re: Strang's “Linear Algebra and Learning from Data” is printed and available

#16

Post by a-dub »

gballan wrote: post #14
a-dub wrote: post #12

I've never seen his lectures, but I've used one of his books for a course and have leafed through another. I have to be honest, I never have understood why everyone loves his texts so much. I always felt that they were lacking in practical applications (even the Linear Algebra with Applications version) and that a lot of the ideas were not immediately clear when presented in his writing style. It often seemed that id…

Perhaps "Computational Science and Engineering" is a better fit for you? http://math.mit.edu/~gs/cse/

That book looks great! Also his writing style is different!

I will note, however, that I really like the fact that the new book has a chapter on compressed sensing. I feel like that was the thing that was always lacking when I was in school. It was like "ok, I get the idea of new bases, now what are some cool ones and how do they tie together." Occasionally someone would throw me a paper on compressed sensing or PCA/SVD or spectral decomposition, but I always felt like I wanted to see a class/book that tied them all together.

Re: Strang's “Linear Algebra and Learning from Data” is printed and available

#20

Post by mindcrime »

mesaframe wrote: post #13
a-dub wrote: post #12

I've never seen his lectures, but I've used one of his books for a course and have leafed through another. I have to be honest, I never have understood why everyone loves his texts so much. I always felt that they were lacking in practical applications (even the Linear Algebra with Applications version) and that a lot of the ideas were not immediately clear when presented in his writing style. It often seemed that id…

His book doesn't make much sense if you haven't seen his lectures.

One of this books, I forget the exact title, was pointedly written to accompany the online lectures. That one, in particular, I would guess is better read in conjunction with said lectures. Not sure about his other texts.
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