WELCOME

TO MATH
FOR DATA
SCIENCE
BILL CLASTER

YOU GUYS ARE

LUCKY
You get to learn something which is as beautiful as a great
piece of art and
Can save lives, improve the human condition, and make you
big money

TIPS
Dont be duped sometimes, it may be profitable to question
the author of a text. If you are having trouble understanding
that text, it may be worthwhile to question whether the
author really knows what he/she is talking about. Read
aggressively in this sense.
In difficult math courses, it is good to try to review the text
prior to the lecture. It helps you to organize the knowledge.

SLOPPY OR
INGENIOUS?
Words we use in math, are they used well or just sloppily?
We know what the word plus means in arithmetic. And we
know what the symbol + means as well: 6+4
But what about if we have two vectors:

What does it mean to

add them??

THERE ARE MANY POSSIBLE

MEANINGS FOR ADDITION
OF TWO VECTORS
So which one do we choose?
Choose the one which will relate to the problem we are trying to
solve. In other words, these definitions come from working on
practical problems and defining things that relate to issues we
have to solve repeatedly. Hopefully this will reduce our work.
So in the case of vector addition, the original problem that was
being worked on may have been that of trying to understand
when two forces are acting simultaneously on an object (maybe
a cannon ball). For example, the force of gravity, and the air
friction force.
We may wish to know what the resulting force is. i.e. the
sum of the two forces. Thus we define vector addition so that
it results in the resultant force.

The point here is not to learn about Physics. It is just to point

to the fact that we are using the word plus for vectors and in
a way this is misleading because plus was initially a word
for describing a way of combining two numbers.
Any comments?

WE USE THE WORD

GENERALIZE THE MEANING
OF +
But in some sense it is bastardizing the meaning
But actually we will see that in this particular case it is more
an ingenious bastardization than a sloppy bastardization.
Similarly with matrices.

SALES OF 3 AT&T MOBILE PHONE PACKAGES FOR EACH

QUARTER OF THE YEAR IN SF AND LA IN TENS OF
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
sf

la

Thesecanbeconsideredtwomatrices.LetscallthemS
andL

Management:Whatwasthetotalofsalesin
sfandlaperquarterandperpackage?

ANOTHER EXAMPLE,
AverageRevenueperpageclick

Webpagetraffic(inmillions)

Thesecanbeconsideredtwomatrices.Letscallthem
ClicksCandRevenueR
Simplequestion:howmuchrevenuewasobtainedfrompage1in
themorningsummer?
Slightlymorecomplicated:whatwasthetotalrevenueobtained
fromallclicks(i.e.page1andpage2)inthemorningsummer?
similarly:whatwasthetotalrevenueobtainedfromallclicksinthe
afternoonsummer?

WE CAN SEE THE UTILITY OF DEFINING

AN OPERATION THEN WE CALL IT
(IN MY VIEW UNFORTUNATELY)
MULTIPLICATION
Not trying to teach you what we mean by matrix multiplication (but
actually we just did), but rather that the words addition and
multiplication are being generalized here.
So is this sloppy or ingenious? I will let you decide (and it would
be different case by case).

LATER AFTER WE DEFINE

THESE OPERATIONS
We will try to prove properties of these operations.
Properties usually involve an equals sign, e.g. 4 + 9 = 9 + 5 or
a + b = b + a.
Why look for properties? Two reasons: 1) having the option
to do something another way is always a good thing (a free
option). 2) sometimes knowing the property can allow us to
cut down on the amount of work: e.g. ab + ac = a(b+c). 3) it is
just fun to prove properties

SO MAYBE WE CAN PROVE

SOME PROPERTIES FOR
Vector addition
Matrix addition
Matrix multiplication

We will come back to all this after we define all this stuff
clearly