What is a matrix?
A matrix is a rectangular array of elements or numbers. A matrix is usually enclosed in square or round brackets.
For example, Matrix of dimensions or order of 3 x 3 can be represented like:
A=
Here, both the number of rows and columns in a matrix is equal to 3. If, order of matrix is 4 x 5 then it means that there are 4 rows and 5 columns in a matrix.
Here,
represents the element present in 1st row and 1st column of matrix,
represents element present in the 1st row and 2nd column of matrix and so on.
The general position in a matrix can be represented by
where i represents ith row and j represents jth column.
Lets take another example of matrix of order 2 x 3
A=
We can see that number of rows in matrix is 2 and number of columns is equal to 3.
So, the very basic question asked regarding matrices is to determine its order and to locate particular element present in the matrix.
If, you are given matrix A=
Can you determine its order?
The number of rows present in matrix is 4 and number of columns present in matrix is 5. Therefore, order of matrix is 4 x 5.
Can you write elements present at position
and
?
We know that
represents element present in the second row and 3rd column which is 8.
And,
represents element present in the third row and 4th column which is 0.
In this post, you learnt about order (dimensions) of matrices and how to locate particular position in a matrix.
[…] we have a given matrix A. We can perform some column and row operations on this matrix such that value of its determinant […]