Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2017 / Paper 1 / 18 / c

In $A^{\mathsf{T}}A$, every row sums to one, so $(1,1,1)$ is an eigenvector with eigenvalue $1$. The antisymmetric direction $(1,0,-1)$ gives eigenvalue $2$. A direction orthogonal to both is $(1,-2,1)$, and direct multiplication shows that it lies in the kernel of a linear map. Normalizing all three gives the complete systemThey form an orthonormal basis of ${\mathbb{R}}^3$. The extra zero eigenvalue reflects the one-dimensional kernel of a linear map for this rank-two rectangular matrix. The question's symbols ${\sigma }_m$ denote the eigenvalues of $A^{\mathsf{T}}A$; the nonzero singular values of $A$ are their square roots, namely $1$ and $\sqrt{2}$.