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.