MATH1850U: Chapter 2 cont...

; 3 1

DETERMINANTS cont...

Properties of Determinants; Cramer’s Rule (2.3; pg. 106) cont...

Recall: Last class, we began studying several properties of determinants.

Theorem (Cramer’s Rule): If Ax  b is a system of n equations in n unknowns such

that det( A)  0 , then the system has a unique solution. This solution is
det( A1 ) det( A2 ) det( An )
x1  , x2  , , xn 
det( A) det( A) det( A)
where A j is matrix obtained by replacing the entries in the jth column of A by the entries
 b1 
b 
in the column vector b   2 

 
bn 

  x  
Example: Use Cramer’s rule to solve the 2x2 system:    y   
    
MATH1850U: Chapter 2 cont...; 3 2

  x  
Example: Use Cramer’s rule to solve the 2x2 system:    y   
    

Example: Use Cramer’s Rule to find the value of x1 for the system below.
MATH1850U: Chapter 2 cont...; 3 3

Equivalence Theorem: If A is an n  n matrix, then the following statements are

equivalent:
a) A is invertible
b) The homogeneous system Ax  0 has only the trivial solution
c) The reduced row-echelon from of A is I n
d) A is expressible as a product of elementary matrices.
e) Ax  b is consistent for every column vector b
f) Ax  b has exactly one solution for every column vector b
g) det( A)  0

Application: A first look at Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors

This is a brief intro to what we’ll study in Chapter 5. Consider the system
1 2  x1   x1 
3 4  x     x  . For what values of  will this system have non-trivial solutions?
  2   2
MATH1850U: Chapter 2 cont...; 3 4

EUCLIDEAN VECTOR SPACES

Vectors in 2-Space, 3-Space, and n-Space (3.1; pg. 119)

Definition: Quantities that are completely determined by a number are called scalars.
Quantities that need both magnitude and direction to be completely determined are called
vectors.

Definition: Vectors are often represented by the coordinates of the terminal point of a
vector. These are called the components of the vector.

Example:

Definition: If n is a positive integer, then an ordered n-tuple is a sequence of n real

numbers (a1 , a2 ,, an ) . The set of all ordered n-tuples is called n-space and is denoted
Rn .

Applications: Vectors can be useful in representing data sets, e.g.

 Temperature of a fluid at certain times
 Positions of a cars on a road
MATH1850U: Chapter 2 cont...; 3 5

Definition: Two vectors u  (u1 , u 2 ,, u n ) and v  (v1 , v2 ,, vn ) in R n are called equal
if
u1  v1 , u 2  v2 , , u n  v n

Example: If (5, a, 3,  7)  (5, 8, 3, b) , find a and b.

Definition: We have the following definitions for vector arithmetic in R n :

sum: v  w  (v1  w1 , v2  w2 ,, vn  wn )

scalar multiple: kv  (kv1 , kv2 ,, kvn )

negative:  v  (v1 ,v 2 ,,vn )

difference: w  v  ( w1  v1 , w2  v2 ,, wn  vn )

In Maple:
> with(Student[LinearAlgebra]):
> VectorSumPlot(<1,2>,<3,-5>);
MATH1850U: Chapter 2 cont...; 3 6

Example: Find (___, ___) + (___, ___) and show a graphical representation.

Example: 5(3,1,  ,7) = __________________

Theorem (Properties of Vectors in R n : If u  (u1 , u 2 ,, u n ) , v  (v1 , v2 ,, vn ) ,

and w  ( w1 , w2 ,, wn ) are vectors in R n and k and l are scalars, then
a) u  v  v  u
b) u  ( v  w )  (u  v )  w
c) u  0  0  u  u
d) u  (u)  u  u  0
e) k (lu)  (kl )u
f) k (u  v )  ku  kv
g) (k  l )u  ku  lu
h) 1u  u

Explanation of f):

Definition: If w is a vector in R n , then w is said to be a linear combination of the

vectors v1 , v 2 ,, v r in R n if it can be expressed in the form w  k1 v1  k 2 v 2    k r v r
where k1 , k 2 ,, k r are scalars. These scalars are called the coefficients of the linear
combination.