Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2007 / ib / Paper 3 / 10G / ii / Solution

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.