Week 1: February 9-13.

 

  Chapter 1.1   Introduction to linear systems 

Key points:       a)  General strategy for solving a simple system

b)  Some systems have a unique solution, some none and some

      infinitely many. 

c)  Intuition:  Guess when are there infinitely many, one or no

     solutions for the cases with more or less or the same number of

     equations as unknowns.

d)  Don’t belabor the geometric intuition.

            Homework:  6, 10, 20, 26, 32b, 24*, 37*.

 

 Chapter 1.2   Matrices and Gauss-Jordan elimination

            Key points:       a)  Introduction to the term ‘matrices, columns, rows, vector,

coefficient matrix, augmented matrix’.  Stress that this is terminology and notation for now, but as will become clear, these notions encapsulate the relevant features of a linear system.

                                    b)  Gauss-Jordan elimation for solving a linear system is a

      systematic way to formulate the procedures introduced in 1.1.

c)  Introduce dot product as in Exercise 34 and show how to solve 

                                         such a problem using Gauss-Jordan elimination.

            Homework:  10, 12, 30, 32, 40, 29*, 37*

 

 Chapter 1.3   On solutions of linear systems

            Key points:       a)  Rank of a matrix.

                                    b)  When there are ∞, 0 or 1 solution.

                                    c)  Vector form, linear combination.

                                    d)  Matrices multiplying vectors, matrix form Ax = b.  Compare

definitions in 1.3.6 and 1.3.8. Stress again that this is terminology for now, but as it turns out, extremely to the point.

                                    e)  A(x1+x2) and A·(k x).

                                    d)  Adding matrices, multiplying by scalars.

            Homework:  4, 14, 24, 36, 50, 25*, 57*.