on that has
taken over the planet (hmm, let me see, can anyone just confirm what the
Second Rule of Thermodynamics was again??).
</p><p>
In any case, matrices are particularly useful for transforming, scaling and
rotating a point in space.  Matrix algebra is used to specify most of these
sorts of operations because it provides a more compact way of representing
a transformation that affects more than one point at a time.  This diagram
demonstrates how matrix multiplication works:
</p><img src="matrixMath.pn