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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3602 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022

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I meant relatively. Subjectivity withstanding.

None of them are particularly hard. But I have seen polynomial fractions that look fairly unwieldy and need 2 of the following to simplify. Subjectively that is more computationally intensive than just multiplying and adding a lot of numbers.

Also, your professor is insane for putting matrix multiplication on exams, it's just wasting time; if you can multiply 2 2x2 matrices, you can multiply any mxn matrices. There is nothing gained other than knowing how to add/multiply numbers fast. My lin algb exams were very theoretical and didn't require crazy computation.

If you're looking at linear algebra as the study of matrices then you're thinking about it in completely the wrong way. Linear algebra is the study of linear maps from vector spaces to other vector spaces, end of. The book "Linear Algebra done right": https://www.amazon.co.uk/Linear-Algebra-Right-Undergraduate-Mathematics/dp/0387982582 is a very good teaching aid, it explains what's actually going on properly while minimising matrix bullshit.

I think so as well. Which is why I said its insane to include large matrix multiplications in a lin alg exam.

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