Linear algebra turns out to be one of the
most essential tools in many areas of computer
science. One of the goals of this course is
to give people the tools to think about problems
in terms of vectors and matrices, rather
than seeing vectors and matrices as these
abstract objects that are described purely
mathematically. You can use vectors to represent
states of all kinds of systems. You can use
it to represent population distribution or
the behavior of a random surfer. We see images
as vectors. We see audio clips as vectors.
We see messages that might need to be encrypted
as vectors. We're going to take a very hands-on
approach. We're going to write programs in
Python to implement vectors and matrices
and use those programs to analyze data and
solve real problems. This approach can be
more work but it's so satisfying when it comes
off. When you actually run your programming
and get results. One disclaimer. We cover
a lot of interesting applications like face
detection, searching audio. We don't always
present the most state-of-the-art advanced
method but a way that gives you insight into
the underlying linear algebra at the same
time as it solves the problem. This course
is great preparation for other courses in
computer science you might take, graphics,
machine learning, statistics or algorithms.
It's such a fundamental topic and yet traditional
courses on linear algebra have not done justice
to the applicability of this field.
