Why Linear Algebra?

Note

Source: Python-specific — no equivalent in the C# edition.

Todo

Write a motivating introduction covering:

• Why linear algebra belongs in an intro CS course, especially in the AI era

• The connection between lists and vectors, lists-of-lists and matrices

• Brief survey of where linear algebra appears: graphics, data science, machine learning, scientific computing

• Reassurance that we implement everything from scratch using only loops and lists — no library required to understand the concepts

• A note that numpy (introduced later) provides the same operations orders of magnitude faster, and why that matters at scale