Course Material Questions: In case office hours don't help, you might try looking to the following if you get confused about the course material.
Other Textbooks: WARNING: It's possible to waste a LOT of time thumbing through one book after another, desperately trying to find a good explanation for something which might be in our book, but is NOT explained in other books. WARNING: Notation changes from one book to another, this is another reason why it's not always best to run for another text when you are confused.
With these warnings in mind, the first place you might turn for additional help are the typed lecture notes by Professor Peter Olver. These are available at Alpha Prints in Dinkytown, or you can preview them on your computer screen at
http://www.math.umn.edu/olver/appl.html
If this book were finished and bound and available as a textbook for purchase, I would have chosen it as our course textbook. I think it is quite good and quite clear. We will use Olver's notes for some of the applied topics we cover this term, and practically all of the topics we cover are also covered by Olver's notes.
Another place you might go for help are the the books I've put on reserve in the Mathematics library (3rd floor of Vincent - enter from the south staircase). The following is a list of these books on reserve, along with a very rough rating of how good the various books look to me. (You should not let my ``ratings" deter you from coming up with your own opinion of whether one of these books is helpful to you!) The ratings run from 1 to 4 stars. The following list includes the author's name, text title, and text call number.
I believe the best text if you want to review some material from a first semester course in Linear Algebra is the text of Bretscher, which also presents much of the material we will cover this term.
BOOKS ON RESERVE IN MATH LIBRARY (VINCENT HALL):
(***) Anton: ``Elementary Linear Algebra", QA 184.A57X 1987
(****) Bretscher, ``Linear Algebra With Applications" QA 184.B73 1997
(**) Strang, ``Linear Algebra and it's applications", QA 184.S8 1988
(***) Anton and Rorres, ``Elementary Linear Algebra, Applications Version", QA184 .A576 1991
(**) Lax, ``Linear Algebra", QA 184.S396 1997
(****) Leon, ``Linear Algebra with Applications", QA 184.B73 1997.
ONLINE LECTURES: The last time I taught this class I used the text listed above by Strang as the textbook. The author, Gilbert Strang, is a Professor at MIT. A couple of years ago he taught a Linear Algebra course from this textbook, and they videotaped all of his lectures.
You can watch these videos by going to the following website:
http://web.mit.edu/18.06/www/Video/video-fall-99.html
And then clicking on whatever topic interests you. They are basically organized by textbook section, though this is not always precise.
You can watch these videos from any computer with a web-browser, and which has realvideo installed. (You can install realvideo yourself by downloading a free version from the website www.real.com). There are many labs around Campus which have such computers available to students. (For example, I just checked that the videos work on the Mac's located in the lab in the basement of Lind Hall.) For most of these labs you will need your I.D., and a pair of headphones to listen to the videos.
Online Quizzes and Exams: MIT keeps many many past quizzes and exams available online, in case you are looking for additional material to test your understanding. These can be found at the bottom of the following web page:
http://web.mit.edu/18.06/www/