Math 51, Winter 2013

Henry Adams, February 12

Example: Is this matrix diagonalizable?

Problem: Let

6
A = 0
1

3
2
0

8
0 .
3

Is matrix A diagonalizable?
Answer: By Proposition 23.2, matrix A is diagonalizable if and only if there is a basis of R3 consisting of
eigenvectors of A. So lets find the eigenvalues and eigenspaces for matrix A.
By Proposition 23.1, is an eigenvalue of A precisely when det(I A) = 0. Note

6
3
8
+2
0 .
I A = 0
1
0
+3
To find det(I A) lets do cofactor expansion along the second row because it has many zeros1. We get






 6 3 
 6
 3
8 
8 




0
+
(
+
2)
det(I A) = 0 
 1
 1
0 
+3 
0 +3 


 6
8 
= ( + 2) 
1
+3 


= ( + 2) ( 6)( + 3) 8(1)


= ( + 2) 2 3 10
= ( + 2)( + 2)( 5)
= ( + 2)2 ( 5).
Hence our eigenvalues are = 2 and = 5. Note that = 2 is a repeated root with multiplicity two.
We find the corresponding eigenspaces. We get that

8 3 8
1 0 1
1
0 0 = . . . = N 0 1 0 = . . . = span 0
E2 = N 0
1 0 1
0 0 0
1
and

1 3 8
1 0 8
8
7 0 = . . . = N 0 1 0 = . . . = span 0 .
E5 = N 0
1 0 8
0 0 0
1
The ellipses show where I have omitted work that you should know how to do, namely putting a matrix in
reduced row echelon form and writing a null space as a span.
We have found only two linearly independent eigenvectors for A, namely the vectors


1
8
0 and 0 .
1
1
But any basis for R3 consists of three vectors. Therefore there is no eigenbasis for A, and so by Proposition
23.2 matrix A is not diagonalizable.
Remark: The reason why matrix A is not diagonalizable is because the dimension of E2 (which is 1) is
smaller than the multiplicity of eigenvalue = 2 (which is 2).
1In section we did cofactor expansion along the first column, which also works, but makes the resulting cubic polynomial

harder to factor.
1