Lecture 1

I got sick, so it was a bad start. I was also pretty shaky at the beginning, but then got the things rolling after a while. First, let me complain about the classroom. It was hot in there. The blackboard space is too small. I bumped into things at the edge a few times. The projector was positioned so that I couldn't use both the projector and the blackboard space. But most importantly, it's a squeaky blackboard! Every time I write it produces this very annoying squeaky sound! I don't think I can survive it...

Lecturewise, I really couldn't decide on what I want to teach. Eventually just review some of the more interesting things about systems of linear equations, touched on nullspace, rowspace, and columnspace, and give a little preview on overdetermined systems. Tried to make something work on matlab, but apparently it's too small on the screen. I did make one mistake in randomly saying "if you're afraid of vector spaces, you shouldn't take this class"... Hopefully nobody took it seriously. Need to fix that next time.

Students were responsive, generally, with some in front nodding their heads constantly, so I guess that's a good sign. There's this one guy that I think I've seen before, but I just don't know who he is.