edX - Applications of Linear Algebra Part 2 Review

Applications of Linear Algebra Part 2 is the second part of an introductory linear algebra course offered by Davidson University through the edX MOOC platform. The course spans 6 units and runs for 6 weeks, but all the lecture content and activities are available as soon as the course opens. The topics presented in part 2 build on the foundation laid in part 1 and include: least squares, correlation, eigenvectors, singular value decomposition, Markov chains, principle components analysis and sports prediction.

Applications of Linear Algebra Part 2 follows the same pattern as part 1: each week consists of 2 to 3 short lectures, each with a corresponding activity that illustrates an application of the topic covered in lecture. This formula worked well in part 1 because the topics were relatively simple and the activities were provided via basic web apps. In part 2, the concepts are more complicated--too complicated for students to develop a solid understanding of them after one short lecture video. In addition, most of the activities in part 2 require running code in MATLAB. The course provides a free MATLAB license and tutorial videos, but it takes more effort to jump into activities. On the plus side, once you get them up and running, the applications in part 2 are even more interesting and fun to play with than the activities in part 1.

Professor Chartier is personable and engaging in the lectures despite following a prompter/script. Although his voice is clear, he spends a bit too much time reading off the numeric contents of matrices, when it would more instructive to have the matrices and other information on screen in persistent slides. Given the complexity of the material and brevity of the lecturers, students aren't likely to fully understand the math unless they have taken a course in linear algebra before. I suspect the lectures are going to leave a lot of students scratching their heads. It might have been wiser for the course not to purport to teach all the math behind the applications, but instead give a general overview of concepts before each activity and provide resources/references for students to learn about the math in greater detail. I don't normally advocate hand-waving, but as a course prioritizing applications over mathematical understanding, there are some instances where it may have been warranted.

Overall, Applications of Linear Algebra Part 2 is another solid course that has a lot of interesting activities, but it is not as approachable as part 1 and tends to rush through complicated topics to get to interesting applications.

I give Applications of Linear Algebra Part 2 a score of 4 out of 5 stars: Very Good.