[neuronic]

I think what courses often fail at is to specifically mention that all of these things are abstractions invented by people to deal with a specific issue and then WHY IT HELPS solving this issue.

Whenever I studied Linear Algebra it was simply "here's a matrix, here is some algorithm, use it to get some number seemingly coming out of nowhere and just believe us that this number is what you really need."

Note that I am not immediately interested in mathematical proof of why this method is correct. I want a plain English explanation of what is going on but instead you usually just get a bunch of notation to digest.