Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2024 / ia / Paper 1 / 2C / b / Solution

The $j$th column of $B$ isThus the image is contained in $\mathrm{span}\{v,1\}$. Since $n>1$, $v$ is not constant; since $m>1$ and $a\ne 0$, two columns have a nonzero constant difference. The two spanning vectors therefore both lie in the image, so $\mathrm{rank}B=2$. By rank-nullity theorem,