An Engineering Approach to Linear Algebra

Professor Sawyer’s book is based on a course given to the majority of engineering students in their first year at Toronto University. Its aim is to present the important ideas in linear algebra to students of average ability whose principal interests lie outside the field of mathematics; as such it will be of interest to students in other disciplines as well as engineering. The emphasis throughout is on imparting an understanding of the significance of the mathematical techniques and great care has therefore been taken to being out the underlying ideas embodied in the formal calculations. In those places where a rigorous treatment would be very long and wearisome, an explanation rather than a complete proof is provided, the reader being warned that in a more formal treatment such results would need to be be proved. The book is full of physical analogies (many from fields outside the realm of engineering) and contains many worked and unworked examples, integrated with the text.