Linear: having to do with lines, planes, etc.
This definition makes me worry that the book is going to operate entirely in R^n. Is there anything here about substantively different vector spaces?
This definition makes me worry that the book is going to operate entirely in R^n. Is there anything here about substantively different vector spaces?
You might prefer Hefferon's Linear Algebra, also free and open-source, and which spends more time on this.
http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/
Both books look truly excellent.
It's not uncommon for even undergraduate linear algebra to cover abstract spaces and notions of linearity which generalize beyond R^n. For example, the function space P_n consisting of all polynomials with degree less than or equal to n. Hoffman-Kunze, Halmos, Axler and Friedberg-Insel-Spence are all examples of undergraduate textbooks which cover this material.
This isn't just theoretical. Function spaces like P_n are useful in applied mathematics. And even if you don't use function spaces, it's very common for engineers, physicists and applied mathematicians to work in the complex space C^n rather than R^n.
Thanks to representation theory, we can model vector spaces as R^n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_theory
Every finite dimensional vector space over the real numbers is isomorphic to R^n, for some n. But there is not always a canonical or "unique" isomorphism. I think the real difference -- and it is a subtle one -- is that R^n always comes with an "obvious" choice of basis, and many vector spaces don't.
I think the following may be the easiest interesting example. Consider the subspace of R^3, consisting of all (x, y, z) for which
x + y + z = 0.
This is a 2-dimensional real vector space. It is isomorphic to R^2, although in some sense it does not "present as such": you have to choose an isomorphism to R^2 if you want to "treat it as R^2", and there is no single choice that stands out.
In practice, one would not necessarily construct an isomorphism to R^2, or (more or less equivalently) exhibit a basis, before working with this vector space directly.
I'm not too familiar with representation theory. Do you know where I could find a worked example of constructing, say, a representation of (F_p)^m on R^n? (for prime p and m>1)
algebra: solving equations involving unknowns