This popular and successful text was originally written for a one-semester course in linear algebra at the sophomore undergraduate level. Consequently, the book deals almost exclusively with real finite dimensional vector spaces, but in a setting and formulation that permits easy generalisation to abstract vector spaces. A wide selection of examples of vector spaces and linear transformation is presented to serve as a testing ground for the theory. In the second edition, a new chapter on Jordan normal form was added which reappears here in expanded form as the second goal of this new edition,...

The questions that have been at the center of invariant theory since the 19th century have revolved around the following themes: finiteness, computation, and special classes of invariants. This book begins with a survey of many concrete examples chosen from these themes in the algebraic, homological, and combinatorial context. In further chapters, the authors pick one or the other of these questions as a departure point and present the known answers, open problems, and methods and tools needed to obtain these answers. Chapter 2 deals with algebraic finiteness. Chapter 3 deals with...

Written by an algebraic topologist motivated by his own desire to learn, this well-written book represents the compilation of the most essential and interesting results and methods in the theory of polynomial invariants of finite groups. From the table of contents: - Invariants and Relative Invariants - Finite Generation of Invariants - Construction of Invariants - Poincare Series - Dimension Theoretic Properties of Rings of Invariants - Homological Properties of Invariants - Groups Generated by Reflections - Modular Invariants - Polynomial Tensor Exterior Algebras - Invariant Theory and...