In the previous notebook we learned how to manipulate Mathematica's list construct. Now let's see how it handles the building blocks of Linear Algebra--vectors and matrices. Essentially Mathematica treats these constructs as lists also. i.e. a vector in Mathematica is just a list, and a matrix is just a list of lists.
The intent of this notebook is not to cover all of the concepts of Linear Algebra. Rather, we'll be looking at some of the most basic ways of manipulating vectors and matrices--tricks that we'll need even outside the realms of Linear Algebra.
Remember, as we said in the introduction to the first notebook, in order to tell Mathematica that you want it to actually evaluate what you have typed, hit the ENTER key over on the extreme right side of your keyboard on the numeric keypad. Again, don't confuse this with the RETURN key, which merely starts a new line of text.
You can now switch to the actual Mathematica practice notebook by
clicking on the button at left. It will take a while to start up! Don't forget to come back
here when you're done by using the Applications menu! (You can also use this
menu just to come back here to reread the instructions.) See you in a few
minutes.
Welcome back! Hopefully everything went well. You're now finishing learning about Vectors and Matrices in Mathematica. You may now go to the Table of Contents for the Mathematica Basics Labs, or simply quit.