Math 346 Lecture 1 - Intro to the class and what is linear algebra

Welcome to Math 346 - Elements of Linear Algebra, as taught by Jhevon Smith at the City College of New York.

I don't normally throw my name in the first sentence, but I wanted to emphasize that the syllabus for this course is not as standard as other courses I've taught. The instructor has a lot of freedom, and as long as the topics in the course catalog description are done, the instructor can go in whatever direction they want. Muhuhhahahahaha!

Today was the first class. Excuse me that I was in a bit of a zombie mode and not very chirpy, hopefully that will get better as time goes on :) Linear Algebra is a very important class and can be very interesting. In this class I go through the syllabus and then we start off very light talking about sets, functions, linear transformations and how matrices can be used to represent linear transformations. After this adhoc intro (we were intentionally not rigorous, this is the first class...) we described what linear algebra is--the study of vector spaces and linear transformation on (or "between") vector spaces. We end the class with our first quiz of the semester (yay!).

We haven't actually touched any of the material in the syllabus as yet, but we will do that next class, starting with talking about matrices.

I hope everyone enjoys the class and learns a lot. Those familiar with matrices won't learn much the first couple classes, but we'll build on this quickly.

Looking forward to a great semester!

[jonathanf]

I really appreciate you putting your lectures online, thank you!

[Jhev]

I'm trying this new pan out view that I started trying towards the end of my calc 2 class last semester. Do you guys prefer this view or the close-up view that I usually record my classes in (see some of my videos for my other classes)?

[UnforsakenXII]

And... even more incentive to finish the current classes. First two weeks of every new semester has me scrambling for time. P: