• Four Science Terps Awarded 2025 Goldwater Scholarships

    Four undergraduates in the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) have been awarded 2025 scholarships by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, which encourages students to pursue advanced study and research careers in the sciences, engineering and mathematics.  Over the last 16 years, UMD’s nominations… Read More

  • Announcing the Winners of the Frontiers of Science Awards

    Congratulations to our colleagues who won the 2025 Frontiers of Science Award: - Dan Cristofaro-Gardiner, for his join paper with Humbler and Seyfaddini: “Proof of the simplicity conjecture”, Annals of Mathematics 2024. - Dima Dolgopyat & Adam Kanigowski, for their joint paper with Federico Rodriguez Hertz: “Exponential mixing implies Bernoulli”, Annals of Mathematics… Read More

  • 2024 Putnam Results

    We are very excited to report that our MAryland Putnam team ranked 7th among 477 institutions that participated in the 2024 Putnam math competition. Our team members this year were Daniel Yuan, Isaac Mammel, and Clarence Lam. Daniel Yuan ranked 26th among 3,988 participants. Clarence Lam and Isaac Mammel were recognized for… Read More

  • From Math Olympiads to Diplomacy: Meet Visiting Math Professor Qendrim Gashi

    Maryland Global, published a great interview with our visiting professor (and diplomat), Qendrim Gashi. The interview is available at https://marylandglobal.umd.edu/about/news/math-olympiads-diplomacy-meet-visiting-math-professor-qendrim-gashi Read More

  • Eugenia Brin, Longtime Supporter of Science and Performing Arts at UMD, Dies

    Eugenia Brin, a Russian immigrant and retired NASA scientist who, with her family of accomplished Terps, became an important benefactor of the University of Maryland, died on Dec. 3, 2024. She was 76 years old. The rest of the article can be read here: https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/eugenia-brin-1948-2024 Read More
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Description

Basic concepts of linear algebra: vector spaces, applications to line and plane geometry, linear equations and matrices, similar matrices, linear transformations, eigenvalues, determinants and quadratic forms. All sections of the course will use the software system MATLAB. Credit will be granted for only one of the following: MATH 240 or MATH 341 or MATH 461.

Prerequisites

a C- or better in (MATH 131 or MATH141)

Topics

Systems of Linear Equations

Gaussian elimination
Matrix operations
Finding the inverse
Solution spaces

Determinants

Definition
Evaluation
Minors
Cramer's Rule

Vectors in 2- and 3- space

Geometric and algebraic definitions
Dot product
Projections

Vector Spaces

Euclidean space
Subspaces
Linear independence
Basis and dimension
Row space, rank
Length and angle
Gram-Schmidt
Least squares

Linear Transformations

Definition
Kernel and range
Representation as matrices

Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors

Definition
Diagonalization
Orthogonal diagonalization
Symmetric matrices

Applications

Differential equations
Quadratic forms
Numerical methods

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