A book about matrices and linear transformations written for children
May 21, 2023 9:51 AM   Subscribe

The book may not (or may) have been published. It may only exist as photocopies and pdfs, but it is not a figment of my imagination. It may have covered other subjects like solving equations, but I only flipped through the first few pages before losing track of it. I'm looking for some leads on finding it.

I remember some discussion about intuitive explanations for some vector/matrix arithmetic: scalar multiplication, dot product maybe, matrix multiplication maybe? I remember there were lots of examples and/or exercises with linear transformations and how they affect the same crude drawing. A cat maybe?

And, it really did seem aimed at junior high school kids or even elementary school kids. No bright colors or cartoons, though. It just presented the material in an approachable way.
posted by stuart_s to Education (3 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 


Response by poster: It's Changing Shapes With Matrices by Don Cohen.

It's not so much a book as it is a collection of the author's experience with one particular math activity. It gets students a little practice with arithmetic and a little practice with coordinates. It's also a detour from their standard classwork, so you can encourage them to experiment and try figuring things out on their own rather than just doing calculations.

The crude drawing was a dog, which is, I'm sure, why AskMe didn't get this one. My apologies.
posted by stuart_s at 10:32 PM on May 21, 2023


The YouTube channel 3Blue1Brown has a series called Essence of Linear Algebra. I have not watched it, but the first few lessons in the series may cover the same material, and he is one of the best explainers in the business.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:32 AM on May 22, 2023


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