Linear algebra is central to almost all areas of mathematics. For instance, linear algebra is fundamental in modern presentations of geometry, including for defining basic objects such as lines, planes and rotations. Also, functional analysis may be basically viewed as the application of linear algebra to spaces of functions. Linear algebra is also used in most sciences and engineering areas, because it allows modeling many natural phenomena, and efficiently computing with such models. For nonlinear systems, which cannot be modeled with linear algebra, linear algebra is often used for dealing with first-order approximations, using the fact that the differential of a multivariate function at a point is the linear map that best approximates the function near that point.