Elementary Linear Algebra with Applications | 
 enlarge | Authors: Howard Anton, Chris Rorres
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
Buy Used: $60.00
New (23) Used (27) from $60.00
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 475858
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 9
Pages: 864
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.8
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 8.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 0471669598
Dewey Decimal Number: 512
EAN: 9780471669593
Publication Date: January 14, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This classic treatment of linear algebra presents the fundamentals in the clearest possible way, examining basic ideas by means of computational examples and geometrical interpretation. It proceeds from familiar concepts to the unfamiliar, from the concrete to the abstract. Readers consistently praise this outstanding text for its expository style and clarity of presentation. - The applications version features a wide variety of interesting, contemporary applications.
- Clear, accessible, step-by-step explanations make the material crystal clear.
- Established the intricate thread of relationships between systems of equations, matrices, determinants, vectors, linear transformations and eigenvalues.
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| Customer Reviews:
 starts with tangible topics July 19, 2005
W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Anton is now in the 9th edition of this book. Spanning decades of refinement. What you get is a very polished and well written text, that has incorporated feedback from generations of students.
The book starts by describing matrix manipulations and determinants. These are very tangible things to most maths students. Accordingly, explaining how to take determinants or to invert a matrix lets you build confidence in your knowledge. Also, these topics lends themselves readily to many problems for you to do.
After this, the book heads into more abstract territory. Null and range spaces and the rank nullity theorem, for example. You are exposed to the concept of an abstract vector space. Which invariably some students always trip over. So the grounding in the early chapters can mitigate this awkwardness.
The last chapter touches lightly on the interesting applications, like chaos and fractals. But mostly to pique your interest in proceeding further in the field.
 Rough Journey. December 14, 2005
W. Richardson (Altadena, CA USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is the text I used this previous semester for my Linear Algebra class. I had no linear algebra background before taking this class. That being said, this was one of the roughest classes I've ever got through only because the book kept going against the grain in every way possible. I didn't even begin to understand the entire point of linear algebra until about chapter 7 and 8 when the chapters started going into the general cases, and even now, I know how to "solve" all the problems without even knowing their meaning, which seems totally pointless to me. The selected answers to the problems in the book are in no particular pattern. It's not "all odds" or "all evens"; it's just scattered and it made doing homework a nightmare. I felt like I was back in elementary school while reading this book, because back then all I did was learn "methods" of solving problems without understanding "why". The book almost never discussed the purpose or main idea of the subjects it discussed. The "explanations" it gave would be based off of other vague topics. For example "What is the Eigenvector Problem? Well, the eigenvector problem asks if there is a basis for R^n in a nXn matrix consisting of eigenvectors of said matrix", OK so What's a basis? "A basis a set of vectors for a vector space S is linearly independant and/or set that spans the space S" and the cycle kept hitting me with one definition after another without giving me a big picture or anything. A bit of the book is about "applications" of linear algebra, but doesn't help until you've understood the meat of the book that came beforehand. Also, there were no teachers' solutions manuals available when I took this class, because the distributers have been extremely lax about getting them out (why? who knows). I'm not just saying this book is bad because I was lazy and didn't do well. I worked extremely hard to do "well" in this class. I must have read this book twice through and like I said before, I can solve all the problems but please don't ask me to explain their significance or validate their existence, because I can't. STAY AWAY!
Learn-by-rote Linear Algebra (8th edition) October 18, 2005
H. Lenzi (Porto Alegre, RS Brazil)
7 out of 14 found this review helpful
At my university, David Lay's book is used. They experimented with Anton's (this), and now they're back to Lay's Linear Algebra. Insofar as a Linear Algebra is taught relying heavily on matrixes, I can compare this book with 3 other books: David Lay's; Terry Lawson's; and the one by Hans Schneider and George Barker (Dover book, very cheap). Anton's Linear Algebra has the least theory of all 4. It results in an even poorer product than his Calculus book. Truth be told, I did not use Anton's book, and neither do I wish to. I've suffered too much of his "style" from Calculus, and I saw enough of his Linear Algebra to want to risk jeopardizing my study effort to delve into his book. I'll stick with my other 3 books, thank you very much If you must know: as to what regards "theoretical bent", the order is: Schneider > Lawson > Lay > Anton. Applications: Schneider < Lawson ~ Lay < Anton, but only because Anton's discussions are a little more extensive (not by a great margin). Applications really seems to be its strong point, spanning more than 100 pages in a single chapter, with many interesting and somewhat detailed discussions on "Real World" (to use a term dear to Computer Science types) applications: ecology, graph theory, computer tomography, etc. (none of which you'll learn from this book, by the way, each is a field of its own). I can't recommend it, except as a curiosity.
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