Bringing it back

I finished reading my old Linear Algebra text today. I'm pretty sure this is the furthest into the past I've ever attempted to revive an entire subject. It's not that I haven't used Algebra in the intervening 30 years; I use it all the time. But the application of it has been very narrow. The underlying general theory hasn't been needed.

Bringing back an entire subject is much different than simply looking up a forgotten fact. There's both a temptation to skim over things because they seem familiar while at the same time there's an unsettling feeling that you're not even close to the understanding you once had (and need to have again). My resolution of that conflict has been to go ahead and read fairly quickly (hence, getting through the entire text in two weeks) knowing that it will only be by working through exercises that I'll regain a real mastery of it.

So, obviously, on to the exercises. One of the great things about being an endurance athlete is that the thought of several hundred hours of exercises doesn't really intimidate me. I don't expect to need nearly that much to bring back just Linear Algebra but, as all four of the subjects for the Q (Algebra, Analysis, Probability, Statistics) need some serious resurrection, the total will be on that order of magnitude.