Welcome to the Wikipedia Mathematics Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the
current reference desk pages.
You can try this out for yourself using reflections and rotations as in our article on
Matrix transformations. Try combining rotations of 90 degrees with reflections in a plane to make the arithmetic easy. You will see that multiplying the matrices gives the correct matrix for the combined transformation, and that the order of multiplication is often important.
Dbfirs20:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)reply
Linear transformations are the right way to think about them, whether your aims are applied or not. Otherwise it just looks arbitrary. --
Trovatore (
talk)
22:43, 30 December 2010 (UTC)reply
Did you take a look at that link? I can't really put the applied uses in terms of linear algebra. Matrices with entries mi,j where mi,j is the cost of product i from warehouse j. Then you multiply it by matrices that involve tax and stuff like that. In accountancy they use matrices to work out profit margin over repeated monthly cycles, including tax and labour, etc. I don't think we can frame that in terms of vector spaces and linear algebra in any meaningful way. In those applications it's just a new kind of multiplication. It's a means to an end. —
Fly by Night(
talk)03:52, 31 December 2010 (UTC)reply
Welcome to the Wikipedia Mathematics Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the
current reference desk pages.
You can try this out for yourself using reflections and rotations as in our article on
Matrix transformations. Try combining rotations of 90 degrees with reflections in a plane to make the arithmetic easy. You will see that multiplying the matrices gives the correct matrix for the combined transformation, and that the order of multiplication is often important.
Dbfirs20:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)reply
Linear transformations are the right way to think about them, whether your aims are applied or not. Otherwise it just looks arbitrary. --
Trovatore (
talk)
22:43, 30 December 2010 (UTC)reply
Did you take a look at that link? I can't really put the applied uses in terms of linear algebra. Matrices with entries mi,j where mi,j is the cost of product i from warehouse j. Then you multiply it by matrices that involve tax and stuff like that. In accountancy they use matrices to work out profit margin over repeated monthly cycles, including tax and labour, etc. I don't think we can frame that in terms of vector spaces and linear algebra in any meaningful way. In those applications it's just a new kind of multiplication. It's a means to an end. —
Fly by Night(
talk)03:52, 31 December 2010 (UTC)reply