Assignment 2 – Math 205 Linear Algebra

October 8, 2019

1 Instructions
This assignment will contribute 6.67% towards the final marks. The deadline
to submit the assignment is 18:30 hours October 11, 2019. The assignment
must be submitted online via LMS. You should include both the tex and
pdf files, and any code files you may have.

1.1 Marking scheme

Q1 is worth 17 points and the remaining questions are worth 7 points each.
Assignment will be marked out of 100.

• 20 marks will be for the presentation.

• 80 for the assignment

A good presentation would contain, but not limited to the following:

• Document typed in LATEX. The basic template for LATEXand the as-
sociated makefile is available to download from the course website on
LMS. You are welcome to use your own LATEXtemplate. Note: You
are required to type five questions in LATEX. Question 1 must
be typed in LATEX. You can decide which four of the remain-
ing nine questions you would like to type in LATEX. The rest
of the questions can be submitted by scanning your hand-
written solutions. Please make sure that you submit your pdf and
tex files (and any other related file), and submit a single zip file on
LMS

• A document free of typing errors

• Using figures/diagrams/set diagam, where possible, to explain your

answers. As the cliché goes – a picture is worth a thousand words

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 • Concise and thorough answers. A long report doesn’t necessarily mean
a good report

• Comments in the code

• List of references

1.2 Late submission policy

Late submissions, unless approved beforehand, will be penalised according
to the following.

# hours past the deadline Percentage penalty on assignment

< 1 hour 5%
1-2 hours 15%
2-3 hours 30%
3-4 hours 45%
>4 hours 0% (not accepted)

1.3 Plagiarism and collusion

There is a zero tolerance policy towards plagiarism and/or collusion. If a stu-
dent(s) is found to have plagiarised and/or colluded, or the work submitted
is not their own, (s)he will be given a zero in this assignment. Furthermore,
they will most likely be reported to the academic code of conduct commit-
tee which would affect your academic standing in the university. If you are
unsure whether you are plagiarising, please ask.

Please note that even if you understand everything, copying someone else’s
work is still plagiarism.

***

In the event that something is not clear from the question, you are strongly
encouraged to use the discussion forum on workplace. Individual en-
quiries to instructors and TA will not be entertained

2 Questions
1. We have already indirectly talked about the notions of span, inde-
pendent vectors, basis and dimension, but now you have to put
the intuition we built in proper mathematical terms. The span has
already gotten a crucial amount of attention, so we just add the formal
definition here:

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 For ~v1 , ..., ~vk vectors in Rn , the span of ~v1 , ..., ~vk is the set of all linear
combinations of those vectors, i.e.

Span{~v1 , ..., ~vk } = {x1~v1 + ... + xk~vk |x1 , ...xk ∈ R}

We also say that Span{~v1 , ..., ~vk } is the subset spanned by or generated
by the vectors ~v1 , ..., ~vk .
Conversely we say that a set of vectors spans a space if their linear
combination fills the space, i.e. each vector in the space can be repre-
sented by a linear combination of those vectors.

In order to understand the other notions read the following chapters

https://textbooks.math.gatech.edu/ila/linear-independence.
html and https://textbooks.math.gatech.edu/ila/dimension.html
and summarize those three other concepts before answering the follow-
ing questions (including explanation):
       
( 1 3 1 −14 )
4  0   1   13 
a) Are the vectors  5 , −1 , −2 ,  7  linearly depen-
      

2 4 1 −19
dent?

b) Can the columns of a wide matrix, n > m be linearly indepen-

dent?

c) Can the columns of a tall matrix, n < m be linearly independent?

d) If the columns of A are linearly independent, how many solutions

are there to the system A~x = 0?

e) To determine whether a set of n vectors from Rn is independent,

we can form a matrix A whose columns are the vectors in the set
and then put that matrix in reduced row echelon form. If the
vectors are linearly independent, what will we see in the reduced
row echelon form?

f) If your vector space V has dimension m, do any m vectors in V

form a basis of V?
 
3 6 9
2. Suppose A = 6 9 12
9 12 15

• Find N (A)

3
  
1 −1
• B= . Find N (B) and N (B2 )
−1 1

• What can you say about the relationship between N (C) and
N (C2 ). Assume for this part that C can be any arbitrary square
matrix

3. A linear system A~x = ~b has special solution of the form

 
1
1
~xn = x2 
0
 (1)
0

(a) What are the basis for N (A)

(b) What is the dimension of N (A)

(c) Write the reduced row echelon form for A

(d) Describe intuitively the geometry of the solution space

4. Determine with reason which of the following are subspaces of 3 × 3

matrix M

(a) all 3 × 3 matrices A such that AT = −A

(b) all 3 × 3 matrices such that the linear system A~x = ~0 has only
trivial solution

5. For which right sides are these systems solvable? Give your reasons

(a)     
5 7 5 x1 b1
 10 14 15   x2  =  b2 
20 28 25 x3 b3

(b)    
1 4   b1
 2 x1
9  =  b2 
x2
−1 −4 b3

(c)     
1 1 1 x1 b1
 0 1 1   x2  =  b2 
0 0 1 x3 b3

4
 (d)     
1 1 1 x1 b1
 0 1 1   x2  =  b2 
0 0 0 x3 b3

6. Given that A is an arbitrary 4 × 3 matrix, if we add an extra col-

umn ~a4 to a matrix A. then the column space gets larger unless
. Give an example where the column space gets larger
and an example where it doesn’t.

What should be the condition on ~b for A~x = ~b to have a solution if the

C(A) doesn’t get larger?

Ans6.
If we add an extra column ~a4 to a matrix A the column space will not
get larger if ~a4 is linear combination of the previous columns of A. Or
even if the vector is a multiple of any of the columns of A.
Example can be taken of any arbitrary 4 × 3 matrix consisting of
independent column vectors:
 
1 0 0
0 1 0
A= 0 0 1


0 0 0

Now we will add a column ~a4 to this matrix:

 
3
0
~a4 =  
0 (2)
0

As we can see that the ~a4 is basically a multiple of the first column of
matrix A and ~a4 can be also written as linear combinations of A.
 
1 0 0 3
0 1 0 0
A= 0 0 1 0


0 0 0 0

This basically shows that the C(A) doesn’t get larger in this case as
no new information is added in our matrix of A.

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 In different case, If we take ~a4 as:
 
0
0
~a4 =  
0 (3)
4

Then:
 
1 0 0 0
0 1 0 0
A=
0

0 1 0
0 0 0 4

This case shows that the column vector is not in column space of ma-
trix A. As the column vector a4 isn’t a multiple of any of the columns
of A.

For a solution to exist the lat row of A must be all 0 and for that to
be possible b4 of ~b must be 0.

7. Find the largest possible number of independent vectors among

           
1 1 1 0 0 0
 −1   0   0   1   1
 v6 =  0 
  
v1 = 
 0  v2 =  −1  v3 =  0  v4 =  −1  v5 =  0
       
  1 
0 0 −1 0 −1 −1

8. Find the bases for the C(·) and N (·) associated with A and B:
   
1 2 4 1 2 4
A= ,B =
2 4 8 2 5 8

9. If V is the subspace spanned by (1, 1, 1) and (2, 1, 0), find a matrix

A that has V as its column space and a matrix B that has V as its
nullspace.

10. Find the complete solution for the following equations and describe
the solution space:

x + 3y + 3z = 0
2x + 6y + 9z = 0 (4)
−x − 3y + 3z = 0.