While not explicitly mentioned in the introduction I think it's safe to say that the books title is a play off of the popular title "Linear algebra done right"<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Right-Sheldon-Axler/dp/0387982582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260994052&sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Right-Sheldon-Axler/dp/...</a><p>Which is a pretty amazing text if you're delving in to the algebra side of linear algebra. Though I suspect significantly less useful than "Linear algebra done wrong".
Looks suspiciously like the professor's notes from the linear algebra class I took (on the opposite side of the same country) for the first part. Then my professor started talking about homomorphisms, and things started getting GOOD.<p>A vector space is an abelian group, a scalar field, and a homomorphism from the field to automorphisms of the group. That's all you need to remember for definitions.
Curious: has any of you used Linear Algebra in outside settings of academia? I know there are lots of uses in stats, numerical analysis, non-linear dynamics, and optimization but I've never used it practically.
I am always amazed at textbooks that introduce axioms and then later (or never!) show why they are interesting. Do any mathematicians actually think in this way?