Almost ready for test #2 in Linear Algebra

This weekend was filled with nothing but studying and maybe a couple brief outings. I sure hope that I will be able to make up for all these boring weekends to my wife when I graduate. Our two outings resulted in a new air compressor and an evening with friends at Nawab.

Checking air pressure in your tires is pretty essential and never more so than when gas is $4.00/gal. I've been eyeing this model ever since I saw our hardwood floor installers sporting it. Pretty cool. It turns out you can save a bunch of money if you order it from Lowe's online but pick it up at the store. I saved $50. Really cool! ...so for the rest of the weekend...

Vector spaces are descriptions of n-dimensions, and that is as crazy as it sounds. There actually are practical uses for this stuff, but you would need to be an engineer or physicist. The only way you could ever even visualize this stuff is to put it in no more than three dimensions. If you project two one-dimensional vectors with x, y and z coordinates out from the origin of a coordinate system, and then join those vectors to form a plane, you have created a vector space. If you have only cursory experience with vectors, you may have learned the definition of a vector is (essentially) a line with magnitude and direction. Until last week, that was my perception of a vector. Now, I have learned that a vector need only meet 10 criteria, so objects that meet that criteria now include Matrices, Polynomials, the traditional coordinate vector notation (which really boils down to a 1x2 matrix), and a host of other expressions. Wwphhew! I was talking to my buddy Kluas about this stuff yesterday because he is probably one of only two friends of mine who would be remotely interested in this stuff. He's smart enough to have realized that you can use this technique to solve several simultaneous quadratic equations! When I'm in class, I'm struggling to keep up, but Klaus listens for a few moments and makes little discoveries of his own. Man, I wish I was that bright! I've got one more section in the text to cover today, and then I will have done all of the homework before the test. I will spend Tuesday before the test reviewing all my notes and summarizing. This should hopefully prepare me.