M203 2004 Q4

4.(a) The augmented matrix is:

1 3 2 2 5 8 1 5 6 2 7 0

(b) Row-reducing the matrix gives (with checksums):

r1 r2 r3 r1 r2 r2 3r1 r3 r3 2r1 r1 r1 + 2r2 r2 r3 r3 + 4r2 1 3 2 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 5 8 2 1 4 0 1 0 1 5 6 1 2 8 5 2 0 2 7 0 2 1 4 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Hence the row-reduced form of the matrix is:

r1 r1 + 2r2 r2 r3 r3 + 4r2 1 0 0 0 1 0 5 2 0 4 1 0

(c) This equates to the system of equations:

x 5z y 2z = = 4 1

So we now have the following solutions:

x = 4 + 5z y = 1 + 2z

Since there are no restrictions on the value of z , there are innitely many solutions. So we set z to the parameter k R, to give the general solution:
x = 4 + 5k, x = 6, y = 1 + 2k, z = k, kR

If we now choose k to be 2, this gives the solution in the answer le:

y = 3, z = 2

Howard J. Rose

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