Linear Algebra...

[KillerCharlie]

Depending on how it's taught (and how much detail they go into), it can be simple or more difficult than calc/difeq.

 

[Fenixgoon]

newton-raphson > SLE's

 

[cHeeZeFacTory]

n equations, n unknowns ....

 

[Pegun]

Think about it this was: You have a piping system (for plumbing or whatever) that forms a grid. At point 1,7 of the grid piping system you want to know the pressure based on the pressures around it. That's pretty much the real world application.

 

[50]

It's not too bad, very useful class. I got screwed because our Calc 2 started with Taylor series, infinite series, taylor expansion, etc which I could not figure out for the life of me. The first and only test on this material I scored the lowest I've ever scored in college with an 11%. Once the linear algebra came into play I scored 90's on all the remaining tests and ended up with a B in the class.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

sorry to bump an old thread but

RREF is the most ridiculously nice stuff ever.

I remember in high school our physics AP test or final or whatever always has a "death problem" designed to be worth double the rest of the questions and thus twice as hard. It was stupid Kirchoff's laws of current and just having like 7 or 8 variables. Not fundamentally hard but just a b!tch to do.

Well I had limited linear algebra skills then and I knew how to do REF and RREF, so I set it up on my TI-89 and solved it in like 2 min after I wrote out all 8 equations. I just remember half the class complaining in the end how a pain in the ass it was to go through and solving using substitution.... even with their TI-89s and algebraic features. Sigh.

In college I'm sure REF and RREF has helped me here or there. The differential equations part of the class really helped me more though. Our class was 2/3 linear algebra, 1/3 diff eq, and to me the diff eq was more of a help in engineering math.