Read a detailed table of contents, the preface, prerequisites, and the index.
The current printing is from December 2023.
This textbook for the second year undergraduate linear algebra course presents a unified treatment of linear algebra and geometric algebra, while covering most of the usual linear algebra topics.
Geometric algebra and its extension to geometric calculus simplify, unify, and generalize vast areas of mathematics that involve geometric ideas. Geometric algebra is an extension of linear algebra. The treatment of many linear algebra topics is enhanced by geometric algebra, for example, determinants and orthogonal transformations. And geometric algebra does much more, as it incorporates the complex, quaternion, and exterior algebras, among others.
Geometric algebra and calculus provide a unified mathematical language for many areas of physics (classical and quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, relativity), computer science (graphics, robotics, computer vision), engineering, and other fields.
This book can be used as a linear algebra text, without geometric algebra, as outlined in the preface. Thus an instructor can include geometric algebra as time permits, or teach a two track course, with some students studying geometric algebra and some not.
Chapter 10 is devoted to the the magical conformal model.
Suggestions for instructors (one page).
I have created a six video YouTube playlist Geometric Algebra, about 72 minutes in all, taken from the book. Some knowledge of linear algebra is a prerequisite for the videos, but no knowledge of geometric algebra is assumed. The book assumes no previous knowledge of linear algebra.
From a review of Linear and Geometric Algebra:
"I commend Alan Macdonald for his excellent book! His exposition is clean and spare. He has done a fine job of engineering a gradual transition from standard views of linear algebra to the perspective of geometric algebra. The book is sufficiently conventional to be adopted as a textbook by an adventurous teacher without getting flack from colleagues. Yet it leads to gems of geometric algebra that are likely to delight thoughtful students and surprise even the most experienced instructors."
David Hestenes, Distinguished Research Professor, Arizona State University, founder and chief theoretician of modern geometric algebra and calculus.
Linear and Geometric Algebra is available at Amazon. See the strong reviews there.
Price: $34
A sequel, Vector and Geometric Calculus, is available.
GAlgebra. The computer exercises in the book use GAlgebra,
a Python 3 module for symbolic geometric algebra and calculus calculations.
It is cross-platform (Linux, PC, Mac), with all components freely available on the web.
GAlgebra runs in a browser using Jupyter Lab notebooks.
Output is typeset in beautiful LaTeX.
GAlgebra was originally written by Alan Bromborsky. It is now under development by the Pythonic Geometric Algebra Enthusiasts (PyGAE). Please contact me with questions or problems.
GAlgebraPrimer. The primer provides instructions for installing and using GAlgebra. GAlgebra has been improved since the last version of GAlgebraPrimer. The current version is dated 11/28/2022.
Other geometric algebra software.
I have not used any of them, so I am announcing, not recommending,
the software. I am interested in feedback about them.
●
Stephen Abbott has written a symbolic geometric algebra program GAwxM,
based on Maxima. It runs on both Windows and Ubuntu Linux.
GitHub.
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Kurt Nalty has written symbolic geometric algebra software based on
GiNaC, a C++ library. It has been tested on Linux.
Its chief virtue is that it is "much faster" than GAlgebra.
Its output is not typeset by LaTeX.
It does not run within Jupyter.
GitHub.
●
Paul Leopardi has written GluCat,
a library of C++ template classes for numerical Clifford algebra calculations.
They are used as numeric classes with other template libraries.
PyClical makes it easy to use Python to perform computations in Clifford algebras.
GitHub.
●
Michael Reed has created the geometric algebra software Grassmann.jl,
written in Julia.
It could be a useful tool to help people explore geometric algebra.
See the detailed Readme at
GitHub.
An introduction to geometric algebra and geometric calculus for those with a knowledge of undergraduate mathematics.
The section Further Study lists many papers available on the web.
Adv. Appl. Cliff. Alg. (2016). (Improved.)
From the proceedings of the conference Applied Geometric Algebra
in Computer Science and Engineering, Barcelona, Spain, July 29-31, 2015.
Abstract: We give a simple, elementary, direct, and motivated construction of the geometric algebra over Rn.
Please email me corrections, typos, or any other comments about the book. I will post them here as appropriate.