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I am a programmer/analyst with limited (and pretty rusty) knowledge of math.

"Just for the heck of it" I have decided to try my hand at Stanford's introductory course on Artificial Intelligence and according to their course description:

Prerequisites:

A solid understanding of probability and linear algebra will be required.

Can someone please point me to concise introductory texts on these two topics? I don't know if what I'd like even exists (i.e. is there anything like "Linear Algebra for dummies"?) but my main requisites would be:

  • Concise, as in "I doubt I can go through a 500 pages book"
  • Easy to approach (If the book itself has its own list of prerequisites, I doubt I can make much use of it, either).

I can't be much more specific than this (the course introduction doesn't tell much more, unless they have recently updated it).

Thanks in advance!

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    @tomThanks for pointing out the MIT course - really great.2011-11-15

2 Answers 2

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For Linear Algebra I think that the (free) book by Heffron is pretty good.

For probability I don't know too much, but maybe the first half of Tijms book

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The best books I know that fit your criteria Marino are:

Introduction To Probability Theory by Hoel, Port and Stone (make sure you get the 1971 edition;the later editions are terrible) This is the text I learned probability from under the very sure hand of Stefan Ralescu. I think you'll find it's exactly what you're looking for,but you really need to have a good grasp of calculus to read it. But if you've got that,you'll find it a treasure.

Linear Algebra.4th edition by Charles Curtis: Theoretical and concise, but with a lot of applications. And the best discussion you'll find of the Jordan form anywhere.

That should get you started. Good luck!

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    @Zev I cannot believe you downvoted me for that. Unreal...........2012-08-16