The Matrix In Theory

The Matrix trilogy continues to split opinions widely, polarising the downright dismissive and the wildly enthusiastic. Nevertheless, it has been fully embraced as a rich source of theoretical and cultural references. The contributions in this volume probe the effects the Matrix trilogy continues to provoke and evaluate how or to what extent they coincide with certain developments within critical and cultural theory. Is the enthusiastic philosophising and theorising spurred by the Matrix a sign of the desperate state theory is in, in the sense of “see how low theory (or ‘post-theory’) has sunk”? Or could the Matrix be one of the “master texts” for something like a renewal for theory as now being mainly concerned with new and changing relations between science, technology, posthumanist culture, art, politics, ethics and the media? The present volume is unashamedly but not dogmatically theoretical even though there is not much agreement about what kind of theory is best suited to confront “post-theoretical” times. But it is probably fair to say that there is agreement about one thing, namely that if theory appears to be “like” the Matrix today it does so because the culture around it and which “made” it itself seems to be captured in some kind of Matrix. The only way out of this is through more and renewed, refreshed theorising, not less.

This volume concisely presents fundamental ideas, results, and techniques in linear algebra and mainly matrix theory. Each chapter focuses on the results, techniques, and methods that are beautiful, interesting, and representative, followed by carefully selected problems. For many theorems several different proofs are given. The only prerequisites are a decent background in elementary linear algebra and calculus.

Advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate students have long regarded this text as one of the best available works on matrix theory in the context of modern algebra. Teachers and students will find it particularly suited to bridging the gap between ordinary undergraduate mathematics and completely abstract mathematics. The first five chapters treat topics important to economics, psychology, statistics, physics, and mathematics. Subjects include equivalence relations for matrixes, postulational approaches to determinants, and bilinear, quadratic, and Hermitian forms in their natural settings. The final chapters apply chiefly to students of engineering, physics, and advanced mathematics. They explore groups and rings, canonical forms for matrixes with respect to similarity via representations of linear transformations, and unitary and Euclidean vector spaces. Numerous examples appear throughout the text.

Linear algebra and matrix theory are essentially synonymous terms for an area of mathematics that has become one of the most useful and pervasive tools in a wide range of disciplines. It is also a subject of great mathematical beauty. In consequence of both of these facts, linear algebra has increasingly been brought into lower levels of the curriculum, either in conjunction with the calculus or separate from it but at the same level. A large and still growing number of textbooks has been written to satisfy this need, aimed at students at the junior, sophomore, or even freshman levels. Thus, most students now obtaining a bachelor's degree in the sciences or engineering have had some exposure to linear algebra. But rarely, even when solid courses are taken at the junior or senior levels, do these students have an adequate working knowledge of the subject to be useful in graduate work or in research and development activities in government and industry. In particular, most elementary courses stop at the point of canonical forms, so that while the student may have "seen" the Jordan and other canonical forms, there is usually little appreciation of their usefulness. And there is almost never time in the elementary courses to deal with more specialized topics like nonnegative matrices, inertia theorems, and so on. In consequence, many graduate courses in mathematics, applied mathe matics, or applications develop certain parts of matrix theory as needed.

Mathematically rigorous introduction covers vector and matrix norms, the condition-number of a matrix, positive and irreducible matrices, much more. Only elementary algebra and calculus required. Includes problem-solving exercises. 1968 edition.

Matrix theory is a classical topic of algebra that had originated, in its current form, in the middle of the 19th century. It is remarkable that for more than 150 years it continues to be an active area of research full of new discoveries and new applicat

Over the last fifteen years a variety of problems in combinatorics have been solved in terms of random matrix theory. More precisely, the situation is as follows: the problems at hand are probabilistic in nature and, in an appropriate scaling limit, it turns out that certain key quantities associated with these problems behave statistically like the eigenvalues of a (large) random matrix. Said differently, random matrix theory provides a “stochastic special function theory” for a broad and growing class of problems in combinatorics. The goal of this book is to analyze in detail two key examples of this phenomenon, viz., Ulam's problem for increasing subsequences of random permutations and domino tilings of the Aztec diamond. Other examples are also described along the way, but in less detail. Techniques from many different areas in mathematics are needed to analyze these problems. These areas include combinatorics, probability theory, functional analysis, complex analysis, and the theory of integrable systems. The book is self-contained, and along the way we develop enough of the theory we need from each area that a general reader with, say, two or three years experience in graduate school can learn the subject directly from the text.

This book is designed to serve as a textbook for courses offered to undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in Mathematics. Using elementary row operations and Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization as basic tools the text develops characterization of equivalence and similarity, and various factorizations such as rank factorization, OR-factorization, Schurtriangularization, Diagonalization of normal matrices, Jordan decomposition, singular value decomposition, and polar decomposition. Along with Gauss-Jordan elimination for linear systems, it also discusses best approximations and least-squares solutions. The book includes norms on matrices as a means to deal with iterative solutions of linear systems and exponential of a matrix. The topics in the book are dealt with in a lively manner. Each section of the book has exercises to reinforce the concepts, and problems have been added at the end of each chapter. Most of these problems are theoretical, and they do not fit into the running text linearly. The detailed coverage and pedagogical tools make this an ideal textbook for students and researchers enrolled in senior undergraduate and beginning postgraduate mathematics courses.