Chapter 5

Linear Algebra

Perhaps the most universal tools of graphics programs are the matrices that change or transform points and vectors. In the next chapter, we will see how a vector can be represented as a matrix with a single column, and how the vector can be represented in a different basis via multiplication with a square matrix. We will also describe how we can use such multiplications to accomplish changes in the vector such as scaling, rotation, and translation. In this chapter, we review basic linear algebra from a geometric perspective, focusing on intuition and algorithms that work well in the two- and three-dimensional case.

This chapter can be skipped by readers comfortable with linear algebra. However, there may be some enlightening ...

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