As it turns out, there’s an easier way to solve systems of otherwise complex equations in quantum dynamics (or any number of engineering fields), and this book shows how to do the math. This is common in the sciences, converting hard-to-solve equations into something else easy to solve. And you still get the right answer; nature acts just as the solutions to those equations say it does. No one knows why this is (a topic the late physicist Steven Weinberg treats too briefly in his Dreams of a Final Theory). How is it that the execution of mental acrobatics by dead symbols on a page, with no reference to nature—either in their execution or their original invention by mathematicians—reveals nature as it is? Something ghostly is going on. Something wonderful, awe-inspiring, and utterly unconcerned with the inanity of Trump, his cult, or the collapse of American civilization. A great escape. This book helps get you there.
Wary of the occasional typo so common in technical books filled with equations, I found this one to be good for those, like me, interested in a quick start to the topic with immediate application in mind. This old 3rd edition (1981) can be had for a song, and I’m a terrible singer. (There are 12 or 13 editions now from the author, Howard Anton, still with us in his 90s.) It’s a nuts and bolts procedural approach, something like, “Watch this. This is how you do it.” Things like the Gauss-Jordan elimination method; bulky, a little clumsy, and somehow perfectly accurate are addressed in a step-by-step manner in Anton’s book, which the student can mimic and repeat for their own system of linear equations (Matlab does the whole process with the “rref” function). Without many theories or proofs so thrilling to mathematicians, this book is for the sciences and engineering. It’s a great tool for kids in high school advanced placement or prepping for college, especially when paired with Matlab. Matlab—the industry standard—is, after all, based on the matrix algebra and vector operations this book addresses. In about 3-months, 90 minutes per day, I went through the entire book while solving selected problems from the text with Matlab code. (Matlab now offers a full-up license for home, for cheap, online.)
An excellent tool and reference for school or work.