A bird’s eye view of linear algebra: The measure of a map — determinant
<p>We discussed in the <a href="https://medium.com/towards-data-science/a-birds-eye-view-of-linear-algebra-the-basics-29ad2122d98f" rel="noopener">previous chapter</a> the concept of vector spaces (basically n-dimensional collections of numbers — and more generally collections of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_(mathematics)" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">fields</a>) and linear maps that operate on two of those vector spaces, taking objects in one to the other.</p>
<p>As an example of these kinds of maps, one vector space could be the surface of the planet you’re sitting on and the other could be the surface of the table you might be sitting at. Literal maps of the world are also maps in this sense since they “map” every point on the surface of the Earth to a point on a paper or surface of a table, although they aren’t linear maps since they don’t preserve relative areas (Greenland appears much larger than it is for example in some of the projections).</p>
<p><a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/a-birds-eye-view-of-linear-algebra-the-measure-of-a-map-determinant-1e5fd752a3be"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>