Linear Algebra and Its Applications, 4th Edition

If you are taking Lin Alg then you have heard of Strang. This is his more advanced book on the topic and it is the be all end all of the topic. I have taken a couple grad courses that did not use this book but the instructor instead wanted to use an obscure text written by someone they knew. I bought this book and used it as a resource for both and it was worth every penny. Things i needed for the other courses were explained well and things that were not necessary were written in an interesting manner and i learned them on my own. I would love to have had him as my adviser or someone to just sit and have coffee with every morning and discuss math.

This is an amazing book. I used this book in order to study for my second linear algebra course and it was a big help. Linear algebra can be a complex and daunting subject but Strang does a great job of making all the content relevant and interesting. The level of detail and clear explanations from Strang are just amazing and I would recommend the book to any college student curious about diving into the field of linear algebra.

Context: The use of this book is paralleling a graduate level course for linear algebra having taken an undergraduate course in the same (8 years ago).Quick tips if you're debating this book:- This is not a good book for a first course in linear algebra. You should be strong in matrix operations and understand functions such as traces, determinants, inverses, etc. The first chapter isn't going to walk you through it.- If this is for a course and you're contemplating an international edition, note the questions at the end of each section are mixed up. This could mess you up with homework from the book.There are 5 star reviews out there that provide a good picture of what you can get out of the book. While I agree with those, as mentioned earlier, this is not a first course in linear algebra. Even having taken a course years ago I keep my initial course book with me to help through this book. There is an extensive use of formula instruction and variable based proofs, but when getting to quantitative examples it is rather fast paced jumping over steps.Publishing material of the book is solid, with a heavy cover and pages. Text is easily legible and thus far I haven't noticed typos enough to distract me.

Strang can teach math to anybody!

The book was okay, but I cannot recommend it to anyone. Strang, the author, does not explain the topics too well. This book is definitely not, in my opinion, a book for beginners or people just being exposed, for the first time, to linear algebra.Apparently, everyone who took linear algebra at my university last semester agreed. My school offered two sections of the class last semester with both professors using the same book. Next semester, based on student feedback, both professors unanimously agreed to switch to another book.The worked-out examples are very few in number and do not cover the topics gone over in the problems at the end of each section in the book. In my previous calculus books, if I had trouble on a problem, I could go back to a specific section in the chapter and read why a certain answer was the answer. In this book, despite the claims that linear algebra is a well understood mathematical discipline, it was nearly impossible to find a good explanation as to why a certain answer was a good answer.There is another thing. Strang would often put problems on a certain topic in, say chapter one and not officially go over that topic in, say, chapter three. In my opinion, that is such a bad way to introduce a topic to a beginner and quite the turnoff.For the most part, the online video lectures do help in further explaining the topics gone over in the book. But, the online video lectures are from Spring 1999 and a different book, so the material is a little dated but easy to follow.Unless your professor knows exactly what he is talking about, I would recommend finding another supplementary text to better understand the topics gone over in this book. This book was definitely not worth the $170 I paid for it.

Amazon college text rental makes the start of every new semester a breeze! No more choking on textbook prices. Quality always excellent. Quick and timely arrival. Returns so simple I leave it to my student to take care.