Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2017 / ib / Paper 4 / 8C / Solution

The successive differences of the constant entries give a simple LDL decomposition:For example, entry $(i,j)$ of $LD{L}^T$ is the sum of the first $\min (i,j)$ entries of $D$, directly verifying every entry of $A$. Because $L$ is an invertible matrix, $x^{T}Ax=(L^{T}x{)}^{T}D(L^{T}x)$ is strictly positive for every nonzero vector exactly when every diagonal entry of $D$ is positive. ConsequentlyAt $\lambda =14$ it is a positive semidefinite matrix and singular; for $\lambda <14$ its quadratic form takes both positive and negative values.

When $\lambda =30$, taking positive square roots of $D$ yields the Cholesky decomposition