Week 3: Matrices

This will be the first full week of the course, when you will be both learning and working on exercises on this week's material, while you finish the assignment on last week's material. This will be our weekly rhythm. Do it 11 more times and the course will be over, and we will all go outside to play for the summer!

Matrices

This week we will look at something that is new for most (but not quite all) of you: Matrices. These are just tables of numbers, but they can be used to model a surprising number of things. In fact we will use them in different ways at four different points in the course (Weeks 3, 5, 13 and 15 for the curious among you).

Our focus this week is on learning to solve systems of equations using matrices. We do that by repeatedly pivoting the matrix, so the key skill to master this week is pivoting a matrix. It's a detailed, but mechanical process, that can be mastered with a little practice.

As always all the week's material is shown on the Weekly overview page, and most of it is available now. The last two items will be posted today and tomorrow.

Reminder: Exercise Set 2 is due by 4 pm today!

Make sure you have sent me your work for both Exercise sets 2.1 and 2.2. Don't let these easy marks slip through your fingers.

Assignment 1 is due by 4 pm this Friday

Submit PDF files of work done by hand, or in a word processor. (Let me know if you are unsure how to create these.)
Excel spreadsheet files should be sent as file attachments.
Google sheets can be submitted by sharing a link to them.

Who we are

I appreciate the information you shared in Exercise 1. It's both helpful and interesting to know a bit about your backgrounds, and who you are. Earlier I posted a collage of all your stick figures to the discussion forum so you could see how your classmates are feeling.

Here's another piece. If you think your math is rusty you're not the only one!

Possible upcoming breakage 😬

Later this week I have to do a bunch of file renaming and site maintenance. I will be as careful as I can, but some breakage might result. As always help me and your classmates out by reporting all errors. Thanks in advance!

Small site change

I have removed my office hours from the Moodle calendar. I found the reminders about them cluttered up the list of "Upcoming events", distracting from the deadlines for Exercises and Assignments. Furthermore they're optional, and I wouldn't put our classes in the calendar if this were an in-person course. Hopefully in the same way that you know you should go to class, you know that you can come to office hours. I'll still be there every Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10:30-11:30.

That's all for now!

Stay well and stay in touch,
Tim