Several of my peers have mentioned that "linear algebra" is very important when studying algorithms. I've studied a variety of algorithms and taken a few linear algebra courses and I don't see the connection. So how is linear algebra used in algorithms?
For example what interesting things can one with a connectivity matrix for a graph?
Linear algebra is the building block of machine learning and deep learning. Understanding these concepts at the vector and matrix level deepens your understanding and widens your perspective of a particular ML problem. These computations can be performed using a for-loop for 100 iterations.
Linear algebra provides concepts that are crucial to many areas of computer science, including graphics, image processing, cryptography, machine learning, computer vision, optimization, graph algorithms, quantum computation, computational biology, information retrieval and web search.
Linear algebra is also important in many algorithms in computer algebra, as you might have guessed.
The matrix can represent an entire alphabet and its encrypted counterpart. Thus, linear algebra serves as a tool to manipulate simple shift ciphers, and more generally, affine ciphers, which multiply some integer k by y as well as perform a shift l (ky+l=x).
Three concrete examples:
Basically it comes down to the fact that linear algebra is a very powerful method when dealing with multiple variables, and there's enormous benefits for using this as a theoretical foundation when designing algorithms. In many cases this foundation isn't as appearent as you might think, but that doesn't mean that it isn't there. It's quite possible that you've already implemented algorithms which would have been incredibly hard to derive without linalg.
A cryptographer would probably tell you that a grasp of number theory is very important when studying algorithms. And he'd be right--for his particular field. Statistics has its uses too--skip lists, hash tables, etc. The usefulness of graph theory is even more obvious.
There's no inherent link between linear algebra and algorithms; there's an inherent link between mathematics and algorithms.
Linear algebra is a field with many applications, and the algorithms that draw on it therefore have many applications as well. You've not wasted your time studying it.
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With