I recently decided that I want to govern myself more by what engages my curiosity. And one of those things has been linear algebra. So I decided to teach myself. Below is some information for myself to prepare and stay the course.

Goals

Success in this endeavor looks like this for me:

1. [Main Objective] Understand linear algebra, i.e. integrate it deeply and correctly into my thinking.
2. [Secondary Objective] Develop and practice my learning skills; learn about my learning skills.
3. [Secondary Objective] I hope that it enhances my craft as a software engineer.

Risks

1. I stop. Possibly because I tell myself that I am "wasting time" and I want to cut corners.
2. Other things take priority and take over, causing inactivity that undoes learning.
3. Infeasibility due to time-constraints or my ability to comprehend.

Plan & Expectations

After some research, I concluded that the MIT 18.06SC (2011) course, taught by Gilbert Strang, is my best learning resource. It contains 35 lectures and a similar amount of problem sets.

Expectations: To get a rough feeling of the commitment I am talking about, here is some math: Covering up to 2 lectures and corresponding problem sets a day would require ca. 3-4 hours / day. At 5 days a week (15-20h / week) the above course would require close to 4 weeks to complete. This is in line with a self-report on completing MIT 18.06 that I found. However, the person recommended against doing it in such a tight time frame (without further specifying why; I assume so as not to impede the "understanding" objectives one may have).

To counter that though there is another self-reported anecdote that Scott Young completed the course in ca. 10 days. However, in absence of knowing how many hours per day were dedicated and in light of the interest that Scott Young may have to misrepresent these numbers, I will not consider this a trustworthy benchmark - albeit not technically impossible. That being said however, the learning methodology employed by Scott Young (an expanded version of the Feynman Technique) seems to me strongly aligned with my above goals and sounds very reasonable, so I will follow that learning technique.

Risk mitigation strategy: If the feelings mentioned in (1) come up, I will carefully investigate them and go from there. If other things do take priority (2), I will slow down the pace, but aim to keep doing at least 15 minutes a day to keep material fresh and relevant.