Linear algebra with applications

Linear algebra is the most widely studied branch of mathematics after calculus.There are good reasons for this as it plays an important role in many fields.The readership the authors had in mind for this book includes majors in disciplines such as mathematics, engineering and social sciences.It will be useful for beginners and also as a reference for graduates.It introduces linear algebra, but at the same time it is tersely written and includes a great deal of material, a good lot contained in the exercises which, however, also contain many numerical ones.The chapter headings are: (1) Numbers, vectors and fields, (2) Matrices, (3) Row operations, (4) Vector spaces, (5) Linear mappings, (6) Inner product spaces, (7) Similarity and determinants, (8) Characteristic polynomial and eigenvalues of a matrix, (9) Some applications, (10) Unitary, orthogonal, Hermitian and symmetric matrices, (11) The singular value decomposition, and an appendix on using Maple.