This is the first in a series of articles from Eric on Python's number crunching power and how you can use that in your programming. I have nearly forgotten all I learned in school about vectors and matrices, but with a new interest in playing with 3D animation, I am relearning it. Lighting, movement, transformations, all involve linear algebra, the backbone of 3D graphic programming. Actually, you use linear equations to solve business problems too. Even the Babylonians used linear equations .
Matrices are basically tables of homogenous data - like a spreadsheet of numbers.
Spreadsheets are everywhere in business. Even our most common experience with graphs is from business graphs built from these spreadsheet matrices. Most textbooks that have made some attempt to ground the math in real life focus on the business applications of linear algebra. That could explain why I felt this topic was a snoozer. It all seemed like accounting to me.