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Math 1b - Practical, Winter 2018 Notes On Matrix Rank and Nullity

The document describes how to find the rank and nullity of a matrix A by putting it in reduced row echelon form. The rank of A is equal to the number of pivot entries, and the nullity is equal to the number of columns not containing pivots. Bases are described for the row space, column space, and null space in terms of the reduced row echelon form.

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Tom Brady
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21 views

Math 1b - Practical, Winter 2018 Notes On Matrix Rank and Nullity

The document describes how to find the rank and nullity of a matrix A by putting it in reduced row echelon form. The rank of A is equal to the number of pivot entries, and the nullity is equal to the number of columns not containing pivots. Bases are described for the row space, column space, and null space in terms of the reduced row echelon form.

Uploaded by

Tom Brady
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Math 1b – Practical, Winter 2018

Notes on Matrix Rank and Nullity

Suppose A is an m × n matrix. We describe how to find the rank (and nullity) of A and
determine bases for the row space, column space, and null space of A:
First bring A to reduced row echelon form U . Let r be the number of pivot entries
(leading 1’s) in U . Let 1 ≤ i1 < i2 · · · < ir ≤ n be the columns of the pivot entries. Then:
r = rank A
• If u1 , u2 , . . . , ur are the non-0 rows in U , then the column vectors
uT1 , uT2 , . . . , uTr
form a basis for the row space of A.
• If ai1 , ai2 , . . . , air are the column vectors of A (here we mean A, not U !) in the columns
i1 , i2 , . . . , ir , then
ai1 , ai2 , . . . , air
form a basis for the column space of A.

Finally, to find a basis for the null space of A, let 1 ≤ j1 < j2 < · · · < jk ≤ n be the
columns which are not in the list i1 , i2 , . . . , ir , so k = n − r = nullity of A. Determine
the vectors bj1 , bj2 , . . . , bjk in Rn as follows:

bj1 : This is the vector which is the unique solution of U x = 0 in which


xj1 = 1, xj2 = · · · = xjk = 0
bj2 : This is the vector which is the unique solution of U x = 0 in which
xj1 = 0, xj2 = 1, xj3 = · · · = xjk = 0
etc.
Then
bj1 , bj2 , . . . , bjk
form a basis for the null space of A and the solutions of
Ax = 0
are exactly the vectors of the form
α1 bj1 + α2 bj2 + · · · + αk bjk
for arbitrary α1 , . . . , αk ∈ R. In other words, the variables xj1 , . . . , xjk can take arbi-
trary values α1 , . . . , αk in R and then the other variables are uniquely determined by
them.

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