Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2007 / ib / Paper 3 / 10G (Linear Algebra)

The row rank of a matrix is the dimension of the linear span of its row vectors. Its column rank is the dimension of the linear span of its column vectors, equivalently the dimension of the image of the corresponding linear map. The equality of row rank and column rank states that these two numbers are equal for every matrix. Their common value is the rank of a matrix.

Regard $B$ as a linear map ${\mathbb{R}}^n\to {\mathbb{R}}^p$ and $A$ as a linear map ${\mathbb{R}}^p\to {\mathbb{R}}^m$ (the same argument holds over any field). ThenIts dimension cannot exceed either $\dim \mathrm{im}A$ or $\dim \mathrm{im}B$, since applying a linear map cannot increase dimension. The rank bound for a matrix product is thereforeThe bound $p$ is attained whenTheir product has an $I_p$ block and zeros elsewhere, so its rank of a matrix is $p$. Thus the bound depending only on the given matrix sizes is sharp.