I’m not sure what you mean. Beyond rotation matrices, there’s really only trig involved in graphics if you actively want it.

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andrewla 2 days ago | parent [-]

Maybe I was making unwarranted assumptions about the nature of your way to learn linear algebra. The approaches that I've seen invariably have to produce a sample matrix, and rotation is really the best example. The rotation matrix is going to have sines and cosines, and understanding what that means is not trivial; and even now if you asked me to write a rotation matrix I would have to work it out from scratch. Easy enough to do mechanically but I have no intuitions here even now.

	▲	Sharlin 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Rotation matrices are somewhat mysterious to the uninitiated, but so is matrix multiplication until it "clicks". Whether it ever clicks is a function of the quality of the learning resource (I certainly do not recommend trying to learn linalg via 3D graphics by just dabbling without a good graphics-oriented textbook or tutorial – that usually doesn’t end well). Anyway, I believe that it's perfectly possible to explain rotation matrices so that it "clicks" with a high probability, as long as you understand the basic fact that (cos a, sin a) is the point that you get when you rotate the point (1, 0) by angle a counter-clockwise about the origin (that's basically their definition!) Involving triangles at all is fully optional.
	▲	srean 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In 2D there's an alternative. One can rotate purely synthetically, by that I mean with compass and straight edge. This avoids getting into transcendentals. Of course I am not suggesting building synthetic graphics engines :) but the synthetic approach is sufficient to show that the operation is linear.