Stationary directions of the Rayleigh quotient ($\nabla R_A(x)=\frac{2}{x^{T}x}(Ax-R_A(x)x)$)

For a real symmetric matrix $A$ and nonzero real vector $x$, the quotient rule and the quadratic form gradient give the displayed gradient. It vanishes exactly when $Ax=R_A(x)x$, so the stationary points are eigenvectors. Equivalently, the Lagrange multiplier condition for optimizing $x^{T}Ax$ on the unit sphere is $Ax=\lambda x$. The smallest and largest eigenvalues give the global extrema; other eigenvectors can be stationary without being extrema, as a direction mixing larger and smaller eigenvalues changes the quotient in opposite ways.