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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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    If you're taking that course, there should be the option of asking the teacher...2011-08-17
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    The course is an "experiment" in trying to see what happens by having an online, free course open to thousands of applicants. If you check their page you will see that they want to try if they can scale well enough (while still having the "real life" course at Stanford). Lessons will be available as video/podcasts and tests will be automated as much as possible. I doubt they will answer individual questions, unless you are actually in Stanford, i.e. a "regular" student.2011-08-17
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    To complement a good textbook, I can't recommend Gilbert Strang's 'Linear Algebra' course enough. Lectures are freely available from MIT Open CourseWware. You don't need to go through every single lecture, but they cover a good range of basic topics and I'd recommend it if you find yourself struggling with any particular concept.2011-09-16
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    @tomThanks for pointing out the MIT course - really great.2011-11-15

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