Linear Algebra, Math 19620, Section 42

Spring Quarter 2024

Day 2: RREF, Matrix Algebra and Linear Systems (Sections 1.2 and 1.3)

Outline
• Goal: Solving systems with Gaussian elimination: identify rref matrices and reduce matrices to rref
• Goal: Describe and explain the relationship between the number of equations, number of variables,
number of solutions and rref
• Goal: Computational skills: Add/subtract matrices, multiply matrices by scalars, multiply matrices
by vectors, and write a system as a matrix equation

8 2 3
>
<x + y + z =2 1 1 1 2
Example 2 revisited: We started with x y + z = 2 , wrote its augmented matrix 4 1 1 1 2 5,
>
:
2x 3y + 4z = 6. 2 3 4 6
2 3
1 1 1 2 0
4 5
reduced it to 0 1 0 0 , then read o↵ z = 1, y = and substituted in x + y + z = 2, to obtain x = 1.
0 0 1 1
We now show how one can finish the process with row operations.

8
>
<2x y + z =1
Example 3 revisited: We started with x + y 3z = 4 and found a reduced augmented matrix
>
:
3y + 7z = 7
2 3
1 1 3 4
4 0 1 7 7 5
.
3 3
0 0 0 0

Definition. A matrix is in reduced row echelon form (rref ) if

• all rows consisting entirely of 0’s are at the bottom
• all other rows start with 0’s followed by a 1 (note that the first row can - and often does - have no 0’s
before the leading 1)
• the leading one (aka the pivot) in each row is to the right of the leading one in the row above it
• all entries above or below a leading 1 in a column are 0.

1
Remark. The point of rref is that once we have an augmented matrix in rref we can write down the solutions
very quickly.
Example 1. Which of the following matrices are in reduced-row-echelon form? If a matrix is not in rref,
what row operation(s) will get it into rref?

2 3
2 3 2 3 1 0 0 2
1 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 6 0
4 0 6 1 0 3 7
7
1 0 0 5 4 0 1 1 3 5 4 0 0 0 0 5
0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
0 0 1 2

Example 2. Write down the augmented matrix for each of the following systems. Then reduce them to rref
and hence solve the system.
8 8 8
>
<x + 2y =4 >
<2x y + z =1 >
<x y + 2z = 3
2x + y 3z = 11 ; 3x + 2y 4z =4; 4x + 4y 2z = 1
>
: >
: >
:
3x 3y + z = 10 6x + 3y 3z = 2 2x + 2y z = 6.

Example 3. The following matrices are each the rref of an augmented matrix associated with a linear
system. How many solutions does each system have and what are they?
2 3 2 3
1 2 3 2  1 0 3
4 0 0 0 0 5; 0 1 0 2 4 0 1 2 5;
;
0 0 1 3
0 0 0 0 0 0 0

2 3 2 3
1 5 0 2 2 1 0 3 0 1 2
4 0 0 1 3 1 5; 4 0 1 2 0 4 0 5.
0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 3

2
Definition. The rank of a matrix is the number of leading 1’s in its row-reduced-echelon form.

Remark. Find the rank of each matrix in the previous example. Notice that if A is an m ⇥ n matrix, then
rankA  m and rank A  n. Why?

Theorem 4. Let a linear system have m equations and n unknowns (variables). Let r be the rank of the
coefficient matrix, A.
a) If r = m then there must be at least one solution.

b) If r = n then there cannot be infinitely many solutions (so there must be either 1 or 0).
c) If the system has exactly one solution then n  m.
d) If r = m = n then there is exactly one solution.

Definition.(Matrix sums and scalar

 mutiplication)
a11 a12 b11 b12
Let A = and B = . Then we define the sum of two matrices by
a21 a31 b21 b22

a11 + b11 a12 + b12
A+B = .
a21 + b21 a22 + b22

Thus, to add two matrices we add corresponding components. We can extend this definition to any size
matrix. We write A = [aij ] to denote the matrix whose entry in row i, column j, is aij . So
2 3
a11 a12 · · · a1n
6 a21 a22 · · · a2n 7
6 7
A=6 . .. .. .. 7 .
4 .. . . . 5
am1 am2 · · · amn .

3
 Then, if B = [bij ], we define the sum A + B by
2 3
a11 + b11 a12 + b12 ··· a1n + b1n
6 a21 + b21 a22 + b22 ··· a2n + b2n 7
6 7
A + B = [aij + bij ] = 6 .. .. .. .. 7.
4 . . . . 5
am1 + bm1 am2 + bm2 ··· amn + bmn

Notice that we can only define A + B when A and B are of the same size.
If we now let k be a constant then we define scalar multiplication of A by k by
2 3
ka11 ka12 · · · ka1n
6 ka21 ka22 · · · ka2n 7
6 7
kA = [kaij ] == 6 . .. .. .. 7.
4 .. . . . 5
kam1 kam2 ··· kamn .

 
1 2 1 0
Example 5. Let A = ,B = . Find A + B, A + 2B, 3A B.
3 4 2 3

Definition. (Matrix-vector multiplication)

A vector is a matrix with only one column. The set2 of 3 all column vectors with n components (entries)
x1
6 x2 7
6 7
is called Rn . Thus a vector ~x in Rn looks like ~x = 6 . 7 . Now let A be an m ⇥ n matrix with columns
4 .. 5
xn
~v1 , v~2 · · · , v~n . Then we define the product of A and ~x by

A~x = x1~v1 + x2~v2 + · · · + xn~vn .

(An expression such as the right-hand-side of this equation is called a linear combination of the vectors
~v1 , v~2 · · · , v~n . )
Example. 2 3
1 0 
4 3 2
25 =
1
1 4
2 3
 2
2 1 0 4 5
1 =
3 1 4
1

Question. If A is a 3 ⇥ 6 matrix, what size vectors can it multiply and what is the size of the resulting
vector?

4
Remark 6. The book defines matrix multiplication rather di↵erently (using the rows of the matrix and the
dot product) and then proves that the two definitions are equivalent (in Theorem 1.3.8). We will explore
this later. Our definition is chosen as it is the most natural one when it comes to extending the definition
to matrix-matrix multiplication, as we will see next week.
We can now use this definition to write a linear system as a matrix equation.
8
>
<3x + 2y + z =1
Example. a) Consider the system x y + 2z = 2 We can write this as
>
:
5x 7y + 3z = 0.

(
3x y =2
b) What is the matrix equation of the system
5x + y = 4?

8
>
> a11 x1 + a12 x2 + · · · + a1n xn = b1
>
>
<a21 x1 + a22 x2 + · · · + a2n xn = b2
c) More generally a system .. .. can be written as A~x = ~b with
>
> . .
>
>
:
am1 x1 + am2 x2 + · · · + amn xn = bn

2 3
 x1 
1 2 3 4 6 7
6x2 7 = 6 is equivalent to which system of equations?
d) The matrix equation
0 5 0 6 4x3 5 8
x4

Remark 7. In algebra the equation ax = b has solution x = ab , provided a 6= 0. We will see next week
that we can do something similar with matrix equations. While we can’t divide by a matrix we can instead
multiply by A 1 if it exists (once we figure out what this should mean)!