Posted by tpc at June 5th, 2005

I will be teaching Linear Algebra next semester and so I now have two copies of the same textbook with me. When I learnt the subject, we used the 7th edition, this time round, I will be teaching from the 8th edition. Frankly, I don’t see any difference in the two. (The latest news is that the 9th edition will be released this year.)

This edited picture sums up my feelings exactly. It’s taken from this link.
Disclaimer: I have not seen that particular calculus textbook and have nothing against the authors whatsoever.

Back to my linear algebra text, which had a new edition published about every 4 years. Now, let’s recall what wonderful breakthrough in the field of linear algebra has occurred over the past 25 years that required the author to keep up to date. Did I hear nothing? Mr Schmidt of Gram-Schmidt died in 1959.