Math 309 (Matrix Algebra)

Section 1
Optional Exam 3, Fall 2007

Part I. Answer each question. Be sure to indicate how you got the answer, by
showing some work or adding a sentence of explanation for your answer.

  
1. a) Find det   
  

  
     
det      det   det   det   
       1 0
 

   
   
b) Let   det  .
   
   

In terms of , what are

   
   
i) det
   

   

    
1 2 0 3
ii) det 
   

   

        
        
iii) det 
       
 
        

i)   because the matrix comes from the original matrix by

interchanging the first two rows and then multiplying the new
first row by 2 )
 ii)  because the matrix comes from the original matrix by adding the
first row to the second)

iii)  (because: the first matrix factor comes from the original matrix by
multiplying the second row by 2; its determinant is therefore 
the second matrix factor is just the transpose of the first, so it also
has determinant . Since the determinant of the product is the
product of the determinants, the product has determinant
  

2. Two diagonally opposite vertices of a parallelogram  are   and   . A third
vertex is  . What is the area of  ?

If we subtract   from each vector, the vertices are translated in the plane to the points
         and   The parallelogram with one vertex at   and the
vectors     and      as adjacent sides has the same area as  , namely
 
 det           .
  

   
3. Find a basis for the column space and the null space of    .
    

The matrix  is already in an echelon form, so we can see that Columns 1 and 2 are the
 
pivot columns, and these are a basis for Col        
  

To find a basis for Nul , we need to solve    Row reducing the augmented
matrix to row reduced echelon form gives

   
           
, so     .
 
     
            
     
    
    
A basis for Nul  is      
 
     
   
4. The eigenvalues of      are  and 
  

a) To find a basis for the eigenspace corresponding to    requires solving a certain

system of equations and writing the general solution in parametric vector form.
Write the augmented matrix for the system of equations you would need to
solve. (Do not actually solve the system)

We need to solve the system     .

The augmented matrix for the system is:

   
   
   

Note that the augmented matrix can be put into row reduced echelon form simply by two
row interchanges:

       
         , and this lets you write down the
       

solution given in part b).

b) The general solution for the system of linear equation in a) is:


    .


Given this information: Is there a matrix  and a diagonal matrix  for which
     ? Explain why or why not.

No. The eigenspace for    has dimension . The eigenspace form    has
dimension  also (because its dimension must be  the multiplicity  of the
eigenvalue. Since the sum of the dimensions of the eigenspaces is  , the matrix 
cannot be diagonalizable.
5. Suppose  is a    matrix with the following eigenvalues and corresponding

eigenvectors:     with   an eigenvector


2
  , with   an eigenvector.
1

a) This is enough information to find the matrix  by 

i) writing  as a product of certain matrices, and then

ii) multiplying out the matrices to get .

Do Step i). If your answer involves the inverse of some matrix, find the inverse.
(Don't bother with Step ii) since it's just matrix multiplications and arithmetic).

There are two eigenspaces and each must have dimension at least ; since the sum of the
 
dimensions must be  2 each eigenspace has dimension . Therefore   and  
 
form an eigenvector basis for  . Therefore  is diagonalizable and



  
     
  
   
     
       
  

b)  is the same matrix as in part a).

Suppose we have a dynamical system :

  2
         
  1

  

What happens as   ? (that is, for large enough ,   ??)

 2
     (        
 1
2 
For large enough      , so         
1 


c) How is the long term behavior of  different if we start with     ?

  2
In that case       , so
 1
 2 
     (          (    
 1 
Then    as   

6. Find a steady state probability vector for the Markov process     , where

 
  
  

We need a probability vector  for which    , that is

  
     
   

Row reducing the augmented matrix , we get

              
    

  

  
 ,
  
  


so that all solutions are given by       One neat solution (without fractions) for


    is therefore   , but it is not a probability vector because the sum of its entries

 . To get a solution that is a probability vector, we divide each entry by the sum of the

entries: 
 (that is, we choose    . This gives     


II. True or False (No justification is required  just “T” or “F” )

1. If  can be transformed into  by elementary row operations, not including rescaling

of rows, then det   det 

False Row interchanges might be used. Each row interchange switches the sign of the
determinant. If the total number of row interchanges is even, then det   det  but if
the total number is odd, then det    det 
2. If  is a 6-dimensional vector space, then any set of exactly 6 nonzero elements of 
is automatically a basis for  .

False The set might not be linearly independent. For example, the set
            in   is not a basis for   

3. If    ,   spans  and dim   , then    ,   must be a basis for  .

True Otherwise, we could throw out vectors from the spanning set and reduce it to a
basis with fewer than  vectors in it.

4. The vectors space of polynomials in  has dimension 

False dim    For example, one possible basis is the standard basis        

5.  is a    matrix, then Col  is a subspace of 

True Col  consists of all linear combinations of columns of . Since  has  rows,
each column of  is a vector in  

    
    
6.     is diagonalizable.
   
    

True  is upper triangular, so the eigenvalues are the entries on the diagonal:    
Therefore there are  eigenspaces and each must have dimension at least . Therefore the
sum of the dimensions of the eigenspaces can only be . This means  is diagonalizable.

7. If  is diagonalizable, then  is invertible.

False We had no such theorem. In fact, an extremely simple counterexample is the

 
matrix    which is already diagonal and therefore diagonalizable   
 
but not invertible.
   
8. The set of all matrices    is a subset of the vector space  of all   
  
matrices. In fact, it is actually a vector subspace of  

  
False For example, the zero matrix    is not in this set.
  

9. If the real matrix  has complex eigenvalue     , then  has at least one other
eigenvalue.

True      must also be an eigenvalue: if complex eigenvalues are allowed, they

occur in conjugate pairs.

10. If      is a linear mapping whose standard matrix is , then

Nul        has dimension  

True  is a    matrix. Since Col  is a subspace of , rank   dim Col   

But rank   dim Nul    Therefore dim Nul   