Show HN: The Little Notebook for Learning Linear Algebra with Python

Re:Show HN: The Little Notebook for Learning Linear Algebra ... by fnah1827 on Friday September 26, 2025 @08:33AM (#45385763)

That book is about NumPy and not linear algebra. For actually learning linear algebra you need a math book, pen and paper.

NumPy is the worst way of abstracting linear algebra into a programming language. Octave is better in not obfuscating the concepts with OO boilerplate and having actually useful printed matrix output instead of ugly list representations. Even Fortran is better.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: The Little Notebook for Learning Linear Algebra ... by tamnd on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:03AM (#45386030)

Of course, this is about Python and NumPy.

In practice, you'll often encounter the code before the underlying math (especially in Machine Learning), so developing intuition from both directions is always helpful.

Btw, if you enjoy pure mathematics, starting from Chapter 4 in the book, I begin defining vectors and the axioms of vector spaces:

https://little-book-of.github.io/linear-algebra/books/en-US/...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: The Little Notebook for Learning Linear Algebra ... by cowLamp on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:00AM (#45386016)

hard disagree. octave and matlab (and maybe even r) are first and foremost calculator languages, not programming languages.

numpy is an intuitive way of doing those numerical calculations in a general use programming language. only minus is the missing gong and why commands

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: The Little Notebook for Learning Linear Algebra ... by abdullahkhalids on Friday September 26, 2025 @01:01PM (#45388684)

The best is of course Wolfram + the Mathematica libraries. You get full symbolic manipulation as well, so you can do abstract linear algebra as well.

[ Parent | on HN ]