Math 590: Linear Algebra

Math 590 Linear Algebra

MWF 9:00-9:50, Strong Hall 321

This is a second course in linear algebra. Students are expected to have had an introductory linear algebra course (e.g., Math 290 or Math 291) that covered basic topics such as linear systems of equations, matrices, vector spaces, linear transformations, eigenvectors and eigenvalues. The vector spaces in this course will be defined either over the real numbers or the complex numbers. Topics to be covered include vector spaces, dual spaces, inner product spaces (including orthonormal bases via Gram-Schmidt), linear transformations, eigenvalues, matrices (including the trace and the determinant), linear operators on inner product spaces, spectral theorems, and canonical forms. All course material will appear on both our course webpage and our Canvas page.

A Course in Linear Algebra (Dover Books on Mathematics), Illustrated edition, by David B. Damiano and John B. Little. ISBN: ISBN-13: 978-0486469089.

Professor D. Katz

Snow Hall 501

MWF 10am-11am, and by appointment. If you need help outside of office hours, you are more than welcome to schedule an in-office meeting, a Zoom meeting or send an email whenever you have questions about the course or questions about problems on a homework assignment.

dlk53 AT ku dot edu

After each class, a synopsis of what was covered will appear here: Daily Update

Homework will be assigned daily. You are encouraged to work together on homework problems, since it is often more fun to solve problems together. However, to bolster your mathematical writing skills, I recommend that you write up the solutions on your own. Learning mathematics is like learning a language, and the latter cannot be done without significant daily practice. The homework problems will give you plenty of opportunity to practice. You are responsible for all material covered in the homework assignments, especially since the weekly quizzes include homework problems. Homework is due the Monday after the week it was assigned. Check here for the daily assignments: Math 590 Homework

We will have a 10-15 minute quiz each Monday (except those Mondays following a midterm exam), beginning on August 31. Each quiz will have a combination of homework problems from the previous week together with questions asking you to state definitions or results from the previous week's lectures. Your two lowest quiz grades will be dropped.

There will be two in-class midterm exams. The dates for these exams are February 26 and April 16.

The final exam will be held in our classroom on Friday December 18 from 7:30am to 10:00am.

Weekly Quizzes (100 prorated points), Homework (100 prorated points), two midterm exams (100 points each) and the final exam (200 points). Total: 600 points. Note: All students must take the final exam. However, your (prorated) score on the final exam can replace your lowest midterm exam grade, if doing so improves your final average.