Fundamentals of Matrix Computations

Rating:
Summary: interesting alternative to golub/van loan
Review: This book is not that famous as the golub/van loan bible but it is more than competitive. Especially for undergraduate or even graduate students who want to become familiar with computational aspects of linear algebra the bible might be to compact; watkins gives one more help to understand the main ideas.

Rating:
Summary: good, but not the best
Review: when i first saw this book, i was very excited. i would have rated it 5 stars at that time. It's a much easier read than Golub's "matrix computations" and Demmel's "Applied Numerical Linear Algebra".

but then I saw Trefethen and Bau's "Numerical Linear Algebra", and I was totally amazed by that book. By comparison, this book by Watkins can only be rated 4 stars. It just doesn't match up to Trefethen's book in terms of elegance, smoothness, intuitiveness, and more importantly, focusing on the essence instead of being buried in the details.

if you are really interested in the topic of matrix computation, I suggest you start with Trefethen's book, and use Golub's book as reference later on.