Exam I will be in the usual classroom on Friday, February 19, 2010. It will cover sections 1.1-1.6 and 2.1-2.4. The current draft has 53 points possible. As on any exam, it is wise to start with the problems that you feel confident that you know how to do, before moving on to others. Most of the questions will have rather short solutions, if you know how to do them, so if you find yourself doing something lengthy on a problem, it might be best to move on to other problems and come back later to it later if you have time.

Calculators or other mechanical assistance are not needed and are not to be used. Blank paper will be provided, so all you will need is something to write with. Please write your solutions on the blank paper (you may have as many sheets as you need, and may put the problems in any order). Please hand in your exam paper along with your solutions.

Some of the exam problems will be similar to homework problems, while others will draw upon the material presented in the lectures. The following topics are very likely to appear, although the exam is not limited to these topics:

1. Row echelon form and reduced row echelon form, using them to find the general solution of a system of linear equations (that is, Gaussian elimination and Gauss-Jordan elimination)
2. Singular and nonsingular matrices, inverses.
3. Elementary matrices and their relation with elementary row operations.
4. Matrix transformations, the range of a linear transformation.
5. The nature of the solutions of a system of linear equations.

Section 2.4 will receive minimal coverage, and the following topics do not appear, at least not explicitly: solving systems of linear equations the old-fashioned way (that is, as in section 1.1), verifications of theoretical properties of matrix operations such as associativity, rotation matrices, symmetric, skew-symmetric, and triangular matrices, column operations and column echelon form.

I have taught Math 3333 once since we went online at the turn of the millenium, and you can find the exams from that class at the course web page, linked at course pages page). That class met twice a week, so the exams were geared to a 75-minute time period.