I've taught from both Lay and Anton. They're both good books, but I
prefer Lay. One of the problems I've found (and my colleagues who still
use Anton continue to find) is that it takes a long time to get through
Anton. Our semesters barely meet the minimum required by New York
State, and instructors using Anton sometimes get to eigenvalues and
eigenvectors so late in the semester that they don't have time to do
much with these concepts. This was not a problem when I tried Lay's
book two years ago. I had a happy experience, and the students seem to
like it, so I will definitely use it again. The only lapse I found was
that in one chapter (I don't remember which), the application section
was kind of lame in that it didn't use any of the ideas from the
chapter. I instead used an application on coding theory that was on the
web site for the book.
On Friday, May 7, 2004, at 05:03 AM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Hello,
>
> It's that time of year when members of my department start having
> heated
> discussions about textbook choices for next year. Although there are
> many
> nice linear algebra texts available it seems that we will be choosing
> between
> David Lay's "Linear Algebra with Applications" and Anton's "Elementary
> Linear Algebra" (not his more recent "Contemporary Linear Algebra").
> Does anyone have any opinions on the pros and cons of these texts.
> Both
> are popular and have been around for a while but they take quite
> different
> approaches to the material.
>
> Thanks
> D Sevee
>
*****************************************************
Raymond N. Greenwell [log in to unmask]
Professor of Mathematics (516) 463-5573
103 Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549-1030
http://people.hofstra.edu/rgreenwell
|