Linear algebra is a branch of mathematics concerned with the study of vectors, vector spaces (also called linear spaces), linear maps (also called linear transformations), and systems of linear equations. Vector spaces are a central theme in modern mathematics; thus, linear algebra is widely used in both abstract algebra and functional analysis. Linear algebra also has a concrete representation in analytic geometry and it is generalized in operat...
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Linear algebra is a branch of mathematics concerned with the study of vectors, vector spaces (also called linear spaces), linear maps (also called linear transformations), and systems of linear equations. Vector spaces are a central theme in modern mathematics; thus, linear algebra is widely used in both abstract algebra and functional analysis. Linear algebra also has a concrete representation in analytic geometry and it is generalized in operator theory. It has extensive applications in the natural sciences and the social sciences, since nonlinear models can often be approximated by linear ones.
Many of the basic tools of linear algebra, particularly those concerned with the solution of systems of linear equations, date to antiquity--- see e.g. the history of Gaussian elimination--- although many objects were not isolated and considered in their own right until the 1600s and 1700s (see the history of determinants). The method of least squares, first used by Gauss in the 1790s, is an...
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