This textbook is directed towards students who are familiar with matrices and their use in solving systems of linear equations. The emphasis is on the algebra supporting the ideas that make linear algebra so important, both in theoretical and practical applications. The narrative is written to bring along students who may be new to the level of abstraction essential to a working understanding of linear algebra. The determinant is used throughout, placed in some historical perspective, and defined several different ways, including in the context of exterior algebras. The text details proof of the existence of a basis for an arbitrary vector space and addresses vector spaces over arbitrary fields. It develops LU-factorization, Jordan canonical form, and real and complex inner product spaces. It includes examples of inner product spaces of continuous complex functions on a real interval, as well as the background material that students may need in order to follow those discussions. Special classes of matrices make an entrance early in the text and subsequently appear throughout. The last chapter of the book introduces the classical groups.
Undergraduate and graduate students interested in linear algebra.
Pure and Applied Undergraduate Texts, Volume: 57
2023; 367 pp; Softcover
MSC: Primary 15;
Print ISBN: 978-1-4704-6986-3
Product Code: AMSTEXT/57
MAA Press: An Imprint of the American Mathematical Society
Exploring Mathematics with CAS Assistance is designed as a textbook for an innovative mathematics major course in using a computer-algebra system (CAS) to investigate, explore, and apply mathematical ideas and techniques in problem solving. The book is designed modularly with student investigations and projects in number theory, geometry, algebra, single-variable calculus, and probability. The goal is to provoke an inquiry mindset in students and to arm them with the CAS tools to investigate low-entry, open-ended questions in a variety of mathematical arenas. Because of the modular design, the individual chapters could also be used selectively to design student projects in a number of upper-division mathematics courses. These projects could, in fact, lead into undergraduate research projects. The existence of powerful computer-algebra systems has changed the way mathematicians perform research; this book enables instructors to put some of those new methods and approaches into their undergraduate instruction.
Prerequisites include a basic working knowledge of discrete mathematics and single-variable calculus. Programming experience and some basic familiarity with elementary probability and statistics are beneficial but not required. The book takes a software-agnostic approach and emphasizes algorithmic structure of solution methods by systematically providing their step-by-step verbal descriptions or suitable pseudocode that can be implemented in any CAS.
Undergraduate students interested in using computing for mathematical insight.
Classroom Resource Materials, Volume: 69
2022; 242 pp; Softcover
MSC: Primary 97;
Print ISBN: 978-1-4704-6988-7
Product Code: CLRM/69
This book uses finite field theory as a hook to introduce the reader to a range of ideas from algebra and number theory. It constructs all finite fields from scratch and shows that they are unique up to isomorphism. As a payoff, several combinatorial applications of finite fields are given: Sidon sets and perfect difference sets, de Bruijn sequences and a magic trick of Persi Diaconis, and the polynomial time algorithm for primality testing due to Agrawal, Kayal and Saxena.
The book forms the basis for a one term intensive course with students meeting weekly for multiple lectures and a discussion session. Readers can expect to develop familiarity with ideas in algebra (groups, rings and fields), and elementary number theory, which would help with later classes where these are developed in greater detail. And they will enjoy seeing the AKS primality test application tying together the many disparate topics from the book. The pre-requisites for reading this book are minimal: familiarity with proof writing, some linear algebra, and one variable calculus is assumed. This book is aimed at incoming undergraduate students with a strong interest in mathematics or computer science.
Undergraduate students interested in finite fields and combinatorics.
Student Mathematical Library Volume: 99
2022; 170 pp; Softcover
MSC: Primary 11; 05; 12;
Print ISBN: 978-1-4704-6930-6
Product Code: STML/99
The title “Random Explorations” has two meanings. First, a few topics of advanced probability are deeply explored. Second, there is a recurring theme of analyzing a random object by exploring a random path.
This book is an outgrowth of lectures by the author in the University of Chicago Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) program in 2020. The idea of the course was to expose advanced undergraduates to ideas in probability research.
The book begins with Markov chains with an emphasis on transient or killed chains that have finite Green's function. This function, and its inverse called the Laplacian, is discussed next to relate two objects that arise in statistical physics, the loop-erased random walk (LERW) and the uniform spanning tree (UST). A modern approach is used including loop measures and soups. Understanding these approaches as the system size goes to infinity requires a deep understanding of the simple random walk so that is studied next, followed by a look at the infinite LERW and UST. Another model, the Gaussian free field (GFF), is introduced and related to loop measure. The emphasis in the book is on discrete models, but the final chapter gives an introduction to the continuous objects: Brownian motion, Brownian loop measures and soups, Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE), and the continuous Gaussian free field. A number of exercises scattered throughout the text will help a serious reader gain better understanding of the material.
Advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers interested in teaching and learning some aspects of random fields.
Student Mathematical Library Volume: 98
2022; 199 pp; Softcover
MSC: Primary 60
Print ISBN: 978-1-4704-6766-1
Product Code: STML/98
A co-publication of the AMS and Centre de Recherches Mathematiques
This book on integrable systems and symmetries presents new results on applications of symmetries and integrability techniques to the case of equations defined on the lattice. This relatively new field has many applications, for example, in describing the evolution of crystals and molecular systems defined on lattices, and in finding numerical approximations for differential equations preserving their symmetries.
The book contains three chapters and five appendices. The first chapter is an introduction to the general ideas about symmetries, lattices, differential difference and partial difference equations and Lie point symmetries defined on them. Chapter 2 deals with integrable and linearizable systems in two dimensions. The authors start from the prototype of integrable and linearizable partial differential equations, the Korteweg de Vries and the Burgers equations. Then they consider the best known integrable differential difference and partial difference equations. Chapter 3 considers generalized symmetries and conserved densities as integrability criteria. The appendices provide details which may help the readers' understanding of the subjects presented in Chapters 2 and 3.
This book is written for PhD students and early researchers, both in theoretical physics and in applied mathematics, who are interested in the study of symmetries and integrability of difference equations.
Graduate students and researchers interested in symmetries and integrability of difference equations.
CRM Monograph Series Volume: 38
2022; 496 pp; Hardcover
MSC: Primary 34; 35; 37; 39; Secondary 17; 22
Print ISBN: 978-0-8218-4354-3
Product Code: CRMM/38
The theory of geometric structures on manifolds which are locally modeled on a homogeneous space of a Lie group traces back to Charles Ehresmann in the 1930s, although many examples had been studied previously. Such locally homogeneous geometric structures are special cases of Cartan connections where the associated curvature vanishes. This theory received a big boost in the 1970s when W. Thurston put his geometrization program for 3-manifolds in this context. The subject of this book is more ambitious in scope. Unlike Thurston's eight 3-dimensional geometries, it covers structures which are not metric structures, such as affine and projective structures.
This book describes the known examples in dimensions one, two and three. Each geometry has its own special features, which provide special tools in its study. Emphasis is given to the interrelationships between different geometries and how one kind of geometric structure induces structures modeled on a different geometry. Up to now, much of the literature has been somewhat inaccessible and the book collects many of the pieces into one unified work. This book focuses on several successful classification problems. Namely, fix a geometry in the sense of Klein and a topological manifold. Then the different ways of locally putting the geometry on the manifold lead to a “moduli space”. Often the moduli space carries a rich geometry of its own reflecting the model geometry.
The book is self-contained and accessible to students who have taken first-year graduate courses in topology, smooth manifolds, differential geometry and Lie groups.
Graduate students and researchers interested in higher Teichmuller theory, character varieties, and deformations of geometric structures on manifolds.
Graduate Studies in Mathematics Volume: 227
2022; 409 pp; Hardcover
MSC: Primary 22; 51; 53; 57;
Print ISBN: 978-1-4704-7103-3
Product Code: GSM/227
Soft Cover ISBN: 978-1-4704-7198-9
Product Code: GSM/227.S