© 2015-2020 Jacob Ström, Kalle Åström, and Tomas Akenine-Möller

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Preface

"A picture says more than a thousand words" is a common expression, and for text books, it is often the case that a figure or an illustration can replace a large number of words as well. However, we believe that an interactive illustration can say even more, and that is why we have decided to build our linear algebra book around such illustrations. We believe that these figures make it easier and faster to digest and to learn linear algebra (which would be the case for many other mathematical books as well, for that matter). In addition, we have added some more features (e.g., popup windows for common linear algebra terms) to our book, and we believe that those features will make it easier and faster to read and understand as well.

After using linear algebra for 20 years times three persons, we were ready to write a linear algebra book that we think will make it substantially easier to learn and to teach linear algebra. In addition, the technology of mobile devices and web browsers have improved beyond a certain threshold, so that this book could be put together in a very novel and innovative way (we think). The idea is to start each chapter with an intuitive concrete example that practically shows how the math works using interactive illustrations. After that, the more formal math is introduced, and the concepts are generalized and sometimes made more abstract. We believe it is easier to understand the entire topic of linear algebra with a simple and concrete example cemented into the reader's mind in the beginning of each chapter.

Please contact us if there are errors to report, things that you think should be improved, or if you have ideas for better exercises etc. We sincerely look forward to hearing from you, and we will continuously improve this book, and add contributing people to the acknowledgement.

Contact us here!

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Gunnar Sparr for writing the book that we used when learning linear algebra, and for some useful insights in the beginning of this project.

In addition, many thanks to the following persons:

Felix Akenine, for bug reports.
Maryam Azimi, for typos.
Tzanetos Balitsaris, for bug report.
Roland Bosa, for error report.
Axel Brisse, for tyops and bugs.
Sven Busse, for suggestions.
Johan Andersson, for helping with game screen shots for Chapter 3.
Alex Clayton, for bug report in Chapter 4.
Eren Colak, for error report.
Carlos Gabriel Hasbun Comandari, for language fixes in Chapter 2.
Song Dawei, for error report.
Owen Densmore, for bug fix in Chapter 5.
Jan-Harald Fredriksen, for bug reports in many chapters.
Sebastian Haner, for proofreading.
Helwig Hauser, for bug report in Chapter 6.
Quinn Jarrell, for error report.
Mara Kim, for bug report in Chapter 1.
Ilias Kapouranis for proofreading.
Andrey Lagoda, for error reports in Chapters 5 and 7.
Peter Lieblang, for erro report.
Martin Lindell, for helping with game screen shots for Chapter 3.
Sheri Liu for error proofreading.
Onkar M. Mahajan, for bug report in Chapter 2.
Ravi Mandliya, for language fix in Chapter 2.
Sergiu Manoliu, for proofreading.
Jarno Mielikainen, for error report.
Chen Movic, for error report.
Jacob Munkberg, for proofreading x 2.
Jim Nilsson, for proofreading.
Samuel Odeberg, for bug reports.
Carl Olsson, for helping with data to first figure of Chapter 5.
Ola Olsson, for bug report.
Magnus Oskarsson, for proofreading.
Niels Christian Overgaard, for proofreading.
Max Perepelitsyn, for several error reports.
Edward Richardson, for bug report in Chapter 3.
Lauri Savioja, for bug report.
Marcus Seeböck, for proofreading in many chapters.
Adnan Selimovic, for proofreading.
Mihai Simion, for error report.
Mikael Sylvander, for bug report.
Spiros Thanasoulas, for error report.
Andy Tang, for proofreading.
Kevin Wang, bug report in chapter 6.
Hunt Zhan, for proofreading.
Cay Zhang, for error report.
Yunkai Zhou, for error reports.


Enjoy!

Jacob Ström, Kalle Åström, and Tomas Akenine-Möller

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