Talk:06-240/Classnotes For Thursday December 7

I wanted to ask this in class, but we ran out of time: Could you (, Professor,) give us an overview of "what we can expect" if we continue to study Algebra, or pure math in general? When I read the course descriptions, I usually only recognize a fifth of the words, so they aren't exactly enlightening: MAT 247 is "A theoretical approach to real and complex inner product spaces, isometries, orthogonal and unitary matricies and transformations. The adjoint Hermitian and symmetric transformations..." and so on.

Also at the beginning of the course, you advertised that linear algebra is the small scale basis of everything; now that we have taken the course, can you expand/defend that view? (I am not challenging it; there are many ways that are already apparently; nevertheless I think you probably have a clearer perspective).

These are obviously not time-sensitive questions, so answer (if at all) at your leisure.

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Indeed these are questions that take time to answer, and much too much time to answer in writing. I would essentially need to write a pair of essays, one for each of your questions, and that's way above what I can afford.

So ... I took your point that at the end of a class I should review what we have achieved and preview what will happen in the next class. I'm not sure if this will always be practical, but it is certainly a good idea. And if you personally are interested in further discussion of these subjects you are welcome to drop by and ask me in person. I have a bit of office hours scheduled for before the final, and if you wish, we can schedule something extra for after the final.

--Drorbn 21:01, 7 December 2006 (EST)