The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra

Name: The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra
ISBN: 1593274130

by Shin Takahashi · first published 2012

12mentions

7recommended by

10HN commenters

2012–2023first – last mentioned

70% recommend10% neutral20% critical

Why HN recommends it

A light, approachable introduction to vectors, matrices and linear transformations, told through manga-style storytelling. It serves as a gentle review and an easy way to ease into more complex ideas.

Common criticism: Some readers find it too light and thin on visual explanation, with definitions leaning textbook-style.

Summarised by Claude from recommending comments

Mathematics

"Reiji wants two things in life: a black belt in karate and Misa, the girl of his dreams. Luckily, Misa's big brother is the captain of the university karate club and is ready to strike a deal: Reiji can join the club if he tutors Misa in linear algebra.Follow along in The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra as Reiji takes Misa from the absolute basics of this tricky subject through mind-bending operations like performing linear transformations, calculating determinants, and finding eigenvectors and eigenvalues. With memorable examples like miniature golf games and karate tournaments, Reiji transfor

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Mentions per year

What Hacker News says

joaorico · Dec 15, 2016 · Recommends

…The Manga Guide to Databases https://smile.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Databases-Mana-Takahash... or The Manga Guide to Statistics https://smile.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Statistics-Shin-Takahas... or The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra https://smile.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Linear-Algebra/dp/15932... [1] https://www.nostarch.com/manga From the top Amazon review on The Manga Guide to Databases: "STORY: A friend loaned me this book…
on “The Talk” ↗
chris_wot · May 5, 2015 · Recommends

…just restricted to 3D programming. It covers vectors, matrices and linear transformations, which are useful in other areas of Computer Science. Although an excellent book that covers these things is The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra, by O'Reilley.
on “What every computer science major should know (2011)” ↗
enhdless · Jun 11, 2022 · Recommends

I recommend The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra! I read it the summer before college and their visuals and analogies really helped me grasp basic concepts.
on “Ask HN: Best beginner friendly linear algebra book?” ↗
VLM · Jan 22, 2014 · Recommends

…want to spend money, from my bookshelves: Strang (the guy in the videos above) knows one or two things about Linear Algebra. His textbook is legendary. Bring lots of $$$, like three figures. "The Manga guide to Linear Algebra" Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like. I think if you have to start somewhere, maybe this is it. Cheap. $ "Matrices for Engineers" by Kraus. There's about 50 textbooks along the lines of linear…
on “Paradigms of Computer Programming” ↗
gumby · Jun 18, 2016 · Recommends

How about the Manga Guide to Linear Algebra (https://www.nostarch.com/linearalgebra)? If that's too adult, there's always the story of Ping: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2VDKZ4X1F992Q/ref=cm_cr_dp_ti...
on “The Children's Illustrated Guide to Kubernetes” ↗
ktf · Oct 10, 2012 · Recommends

Obligatory plug for the Manga Guide to Linear Algebra: http://nostarch.com/linearalgebra :D
on “An Intuitive Guide to Linear Algebra” ↗
jnbiche · May 5, 2015 · Recommends

> Although an excellent book that covers these things is The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra, by O'Reilley. Thanks for that recommendation! I'm reading the sample chapter now, and it's a great review. I'm not a huge manga fan but this is a nice way to break up complex ideas.
on “What every computer science major should know (2011)” ↗
enhdless · Jul 2, 2020 · Recommends

The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra was a light, but useful introduction to linear algebra for me during the summer before my freshman year of college.
on “Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?” ↗
dragontamer · Jan 28, 2022 · Critical

I've only read a few but its hit-or-miss... to be expected since the series is written by so many different authors. I think the Manga Guide to Databases was really good, but the Manga Guide to Linear Algebra was pretty bad. To be fair, Linear Algebra is really difficult to teach and hard to think of a silly story to wrap it together. But the Princess in the "Database" story is trying to organize the apple-orders…
on “The Manga Guide Series” ↗
belfalas · Jun 11, 2022 · Critical

I am indeed here posting my original question after first trying the Manga Guide to Linear Algebra and finding it was not what I was looking for. Where I wanted visual explanation they went to textbook definitions, not helpful. A few illustrations in the book I did think were valuable so it wasn't…
on “Ask HN: Best beginner friendly linear algebra book?” ↗
downrightmike · Dec 13, 2020 · Mentions

The Manga Guide to Machine Learning https://themangaguide.fandom.com/wiki/The_Manga_Guide_to_Mac... The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra https://nostarch.com/linearalgebra
on “How I Understood Machine Learning with No Maths Background” ↗
dragontamer · Aug 7, 2023 · Critical

…---------- On the "Manga Guide" perspective: these books are a lot of fun and I feel like they're a good introduction. As a comic-book format, they are very quick to read. Its hit-and-miss though. "Manga Guide to Linear Algebra" is awful and uninspired. Skip, just not worth your time. But "Manga Guide to SQL" is great. I think the story about the Princess trying to organize Apples in her kingdom (and thinking about customers,…
on “How does a mobile GPU work? [pdf]” ↗