Timeline for Linear Algebra Texts?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 10, 2010 at 19:19 | comment | added | darij grinberg | Yes, and typos in exercises (also seen in Lang) are the worst. | |
| Mar 10, 2010 at 19:06 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | Most of the trouble I've had with Lang is the sheer number of mistakes in the book. There's nothing worse than a line that says "of course..." followed by a typo. It leaves you feeling like an idiot when you've not done anything wrong. | |
| Mar 10, 2010 at 18:41 | comment | added | darij grinberg | What I absolutely love in Lang's Algebra is his choice of material. I just hope that someone writes up a more well-presented version of this course of algebra. | |
| Mar 10, 2010 at 18:40 | comment | added | darij grinberg | fpqc: I have never read much of his Algebra. It's just the fact that the few things I wanted to look up there have turned out to be not quite well-written. Spectral sequences were one of them; the proof of Weierstrass preparation, while not hard to follow, wasn't written particularly vividly either. I was mainly extrapolating from Fulton-Lang, which is close to unreadable (though Lang loves to refer the reader to it in his Algebra), and Fulton doesn't seem to be the main culprit of this misery (I know Fulton-Harris and Fulton's Young Tableaux, and both are rather nicely written). | |
| Mar 4, 2010 at 3:31 | comment | added | Dan Ramras | I would not have thought to consider Lang's book, but now I will take a look. Thanks for the suggestion! | |
| Mar 3, 2010 at 22:30 | comment | added | user2734 | I second Lang's Linear Algebra. I also found it very accessible, and it also seems to be a good preparation for the corresponding chapters of his "Algebra" (Chs. XIII - XV of the Springer edition). | |
| Mar 3, 2010 at 20:55 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | You're too hard on Lang, darij. Algebra is good, the differential geometry book is good, the book on cyclotomic fields is pretty good. Sure, there are unreadable sections and undefined notation, but the books are generally readable, and some of them are even pretty good! | |
| Mar 3, 2010 at 20:24 | comment | added | babubba | In my first year I found it very readable as well. | |
| Mar 3, 2010 at 20:18 | comment | added | Andrea Ferretti | I found it very readable on my first year, and so did my classmates. | |
| Mar 3, 2010 at 19:56 | comment | added | darij grinberg | Wait, so you mean there IS a readable book by Lang? | |
| Mar 3, 2010 at 19:46 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | For a second there, I thought you said "Serge Lang's Algebra". I'm sure you can appreciate the humor in that. | |
| Mar 3, 2010 at 19:42 | history | answered | Andrea Ferretti | CC BY-SA 2.5 |