For full column rank , a full QR factorization gives with invertible upper triangular . The equation is consistent exactly when the final entries of vanish. If consistent, back substitution gives its unique solution. This separates consistency from uniqueness in overdetermined systems.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 ib Paper 1 18C Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
For a nonzero real vector , the Householder transformation isWriting gives , , so and . Thus is orthogonal. It reverses the component along and fixes its orthogonal complement.
For Householder QR decomposition, successively choose a reflector on each trailing row block to send its current column to a multiple of the first coordinate vector. Each step annihilates the subdiagonal entries without disturbing earlier columns. The reflector product gives an upper-trapezoidal and its transpose gives an orthogonal with .
Here the first column has norm four. Taking gives andThe second column already has no unwanted entries. On the last two rows, reflect using :This maps to . Therefore a full QR factorization isBoth displayed factors arise from the explicit reflectors; in particular and .
The first three diagonal entries of are nonzero, so the column rank is three and a consistent system has a unique solution. Consistency requires the last component of to vanish. For the given right side this component isHenceFor this value the transformed right side is . Back substitution also gives . This illustrates the Householder reduction of an overdetermined consistent system.