Exam 2: Comments Key

(A) The range of the transformation x 7 Ax is the column space of A, Col A.

(B) You have found a basis for Nul A, and not Row A.
(C) The codomain is R3 ; the range is a subspace of the codomain.
(D) Col A = Span { columns of A}. And, the dimension of the range equals dim(Col A), which is the
number of vectors in a basis of Col A. The columns of A, while they do span the column space
Col A, are not linearly independent, therefore they do not form a basis. So, you know for sure that
dim Col A < 4.
(E) This is how to find dim Nul A.
(F) The dimension of the range equals dim Col A, which equals the number of pivot columns.
(G) A basis of Row A is the nonzero columns in the row reduced echelon form of A.
(H) If A is invertible, then Ax = 0 has only the trivial solution. Hence, Ax = 0x has only the trivial
solution. Therefore, using the definition of eigenvalue, 0 cannot be an eigenvalue of A.
(I) Two matrices A and B can have different eigenvalues even if they are row equivalent. For example




1 0
2 0
A=
is row equivalent to B =
,
0 1
0 3
but A has the eigenvalue 1, while B has eigenvalues 2 and 3.
(J) Only Ax = 0 can have trivial solutions. The trivial soln to this equation is to plug in 0 for x.
Ax = b can not have a trivial solution as a solution, if b is nonzero; it can only have solutions.
(K) See example on page 13 of the lecture 24 notes.
(L) You made a mistake somewhere in row reducing.