This book is a fairly standard treatment of this important topic. Chapter one begins immediately with the solution of simultaneous equations via row operations and continues with a fairly informal discussion of vectors linear combinations linear independence and linear transformations. Chapter two discusses matrix operations including matrix inversion via row operations. It maintains the rather informal approach in a discussion of null spaces column spaces dimension and rank. Chapter three introduces determinants initially via cofactors but the relation with row operations and matrix operations is also covered. Applications include Cramer’s rule and matrix inversion. The determinant is given some intuitive meaning as the change in area or volume arising from a linear transformation.
