Mathematics & Science Learning Center
Computer Laboratory

Mathematica Basics—Vectors & Matrices

Introduction

In the previous notebook we learned how to manipulate Mathematica's list construct. Now let's see how it handles the building blocks of Linear Algebra—vectors and matrices. Essentially Mathematica treats these constructs as lists also. i.e. a vector in Mathematica is just a list, and a matrix is just a list of lists.

The intent of this notebook is not to cover all of the concepts of Linear Algebra. Rather, we'll be looking at some of the most basic ways of manipulating vectors and matrices—tricks that we'll need even outside the realms of Linear Algebra.

Evaluating Commands

Remember, as we said in the introduction to the first notebook, in order to tell Mathematica that you want it to actually evaluate what you have typed, hit the ENTER key over on the extreme right side of your keyboard on the numeric keypad. Again, don't confuse this with the RETURN key, which merely starts a new line of text.

Welcome back! You may be wondering how well you did. Click on the icon on the left to see the answers you should have gotten. (Only the answers are given, so if you don't match our results you need to figure out what you did wrong.)

You're now done with this lab. Next you may go to the Table of Contents for the Mathematica Basics Labs, or go to the Table of Contents for all of the Differential Equations Labs, or simply quit.