Having finished a single variable calculus class with my son this school year, I’ve been thinking about what to do next. Probably the next step is going to be linear algebra and we’ve been watching a few of Grant Sanderson’s “Essence of Linear Algebra” videos to get a feel for the subject.
Today I wanted to have a short and introductory talk about vectors with my son, and I had two goals in mind. The first was to show some ideas about (for lack of a better phrase) thinking in vectors rather than thinking in coordinates. The seconds was just sort of a fun introduction to the dot product.
So, I started with a simple introduction to vectors that he’s seen a bit of via the Grant Sanderson series:
Finding a vector representation for the 2nd diagonal of the parallelogram we’d drawn was giving him some trouble, so we took a deeper dive here. I’ve always thought that the equation for the 2nd diagonal was non-intuitive, so I gave him plenty of time to make mistakes and work through the ideas until he found the answer:
Finally, I did a simple introduction to the dot product and we calculated the angle – or the cosine of the angle – between a couple of vectors as a way to show how some ideas from linear algebra help solve seemingly complicated problems:
So, next week I’m having him watch a few more of Grant’s videos while I’m away on a work trip. We’ll get going on linear algebra the week after that.
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