Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-year-2-of-the-earth-sciences-geology-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2024/paper-3/6/a/solution

Apply Gaussian elimination to the supplied nonsymmetric matrix,
The first pivot element is , with elimination multiplier . Perform , giving
The second pivot element is , with elimination multiplier . Perform , then use the third pivot element and elimination multiplier to perform . The LU factorization is
Here is a unit lower triangular matrix, hence an invertible matrix, and is an upper triangular matrix. No row interchange is needed: all three pivot elements used in elimination are nonzero. The final diagonal entry is zero, with an entirely zero last row; there is no further division by it. The three nonzero rows of are linearly independent, so the matrix rank is and is a singular matrix. Direct matrix multiplication gives .

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