Does anyone know what kind of materials are covered in Linear Algebra?

in my lin alg class, we covered some funky abstract stuff. i mean, the basics that we learned in class are all you need for game development, but my class went into multiple dimensions that is not even fathomable to imagine up in your head, but the math works out with column vectors, and row vectors, and stuff. it''s basically a matrix class, and hopefully you''ll get more of an applied course rather than theoretical, cuz the theory just downright sucks (i.e. it''s hard to understand).

a2k

Well, linear algebra is used in many fields. It starts off with various matrix operations. Most game programmers only know these basics from reading simple tutorials on the net and think that''s enough. For some purposes, that''s fine, but for many games, performance could be greatly improved if they learned more advanced techniques that will be covered in a class (eg, for simplifying matrices and the related calculations, combining transformations including perspective, etc).
Other things that linear algebra covers will be more applicable in a business or scientific setting, including resolving various observed statistics into one applicable formula.
I was required to take linear algebra as part of the bachelor''s I''m pursuing. I found the class itself worthwhile for game programming, but only marginally so. I did try to go beyond it in my own external studies (including a research paper on particle systems) and that helped a lot.
The specifics of what you''ll learn will vary depending on the curriculum/book. Some are much more graphics oriented than business oriented. At any rate, I think it''s good to learn.

I definitely agree with Belandrew. I go to DigiPen, where we study the art of making games, and it is a required course there. It definitely is applicable to games, increasingly more so in the later studies.

First of all, linear algebra relies heavily upon matrices and the application of matrices to problems. Once you start to learn the basic ideas, and get comfortable with dimensions and linear dependenc/independence, the most important stuff comes in fourier series and eigenvalues/eigenvectors. These topics can be used all over the place in games, and I''m sure there are uses for them that nobody''s used yet. I also noticed that quaternions rely on many of the laws of linear algebra - they''re probably derived from it. Anyway, I don''t imagine you have any idea what I''m talking about here, but please do look into learning more about them, since it will help you tenfold.

Good luck in your quest,

Andy Luedke