I’m sitting here already intimidated. The first week’s content (and seemingly the weeks after) is wall to wall impenetrable linear algebra. Lot’s of “Let A be a n x n matrix…take the conjugate transpose and…”. Anything that starts “let…” just turns my brain of, especially if it’s followed by streams of maths symbols with no diagrams; and worse when there are assumptions that this stuff is all quite obvious. Did I really sign up to this. I’m already wondering whether it is worth it.
I sit back wondering where the intuition in all this is. It’s not really in the course proposed literature; nor the course notes. They all concentrate on what linear algebra is and what parts of it I need to know; none of the pedagogic why. I can partially understand, the course is from researches in quantum mechanics…they’ve probably forgotten their rather varied audience.
Similarly the course doesn’t sit well with me at present. The welcome meeting last week was missing people. Week 1 hasn’t begun with any contact or kick-off – we have to wait until Wednesday for the first live session. It’s definitely not ran on a commercial service-focussed basis.
This indeed feels like a mistake to have embarked upon. I’m left wondering if this will be an interesting one module investment by myself and a graceful retirement after 7 weeks.
Let’s get entangled…