Section 1.1 - Matrices, Systems of Equations and Row Operations
Systems of linear equations are much easier to work with when they're organized in the form of a matrix. In this section, we'll introduce matrices as a compact way to represent linear systems and develop the elementary row operations that let us manipulate them without changing their solutions. These operations form the foundation of Gaussian elimination and many of the computational techniques you'll see throughout the course.
Videos
Linear algebra starts with something that should be familiar to everyone although maybe not with quite this level of generality. In your high school algebra classes, you learned about linear equations in two variables and eventually, maybe in a precalc class, linear equations in three variables. We’re going to take that a step further and let our linear equations have an arbitrary (but finite) number of variables. (lecture slides)
