The preceding cycles show the action on a full basis, not only on one direction: sends , and reverses each arrow. Therefore either composition fixes every basis vector, and by linearity fixes every vector. Thus
In particular is an orthogonal matrix, , and .
Use the common eigenvectors of and . For each ,
Thus, without constructing explicitly, its eigenvalues are
The eigenvalue has direction . The repeated eigenvalue has a real eigenspace consisting of vectors whose coordinates sum to zero. This is the general rule for the symmetric part of an orthogonal matrix. Adding unrelated lists of eigenvalues would not suffice; here the shared eigenvectors justify the pairing.
For , the tangent vector is . Substitute into the field:
Its scalar product with the tangent is . Hence the explicitly parametrized line integral is
As a check, the potential from part (d) has values at and at , giving the same difference.
The direction vectors are and . Their scalar product is . Both are nonzero, so the lines are perpendicular:
For , the components of an eigenvector are equal; for , they are opposite. Dividing each vector by its Euclidean norm gives
They are mutually orthogonal and have unit norm. The labels specify their eigenvalues even when .
The matrix is symmetric under interchange of the first and third coordinates. For an antisymmetric vector , direct multiplication gives . For a symmetric vector , the linear transformation reduces to
The reduced characteristic polynomial is . At , its equations give ; at , they give . Normalizing the three eigenvectors gives
Their norms are one. Their unnormalized pairwise dot products are , and , proving mutual orthogonality. The eigenvalues sum to six and have product zero, agreeing with the matrix trace and determinant from part (a).
The three eigenvectors form an orthonormal basis, so an arbitrary vector has expansion . Multiplication by removes the zero-eigenvalue component:
Its dot product with is zero for every . Thus one convenient answer is the nonzero vector
Equivalently, , so . Any nonzero scalar multiple of this vector in the null space also works.
A space diagonal of the unit cube has displacement vector . Its Euclidean norm, or two successive applications of the Pythagorean theorem, gives
The requested diagonal joins opposite vertices; would be the diagonal of a face.
Let . These three vectors are linearly independent, so write . Taking the dot product with gives . Likewise, the dot products with and give
Here the cyclic invariance and sign change under an interchange of the scalar triple product fix every sign. Substituting the three coefficients proves
This is precisely coordinate extraction using the reciprocal basis .
Put . The squared distance to a point on the line is . Since , completing the square in gives its minimum at , with value . The cross product identity therefore proves
For the given line, , so its squared distance to is . Substituting the parabola gives
The global minimum occurs at , hence
The corresponding points on the parabola are ; their nearest points on the line are . The connecting vectors are orthogonal to the line, as the projection calculation requires.
The fixed vectors have constant components, so is constant, and . Hence the divergence is
Multiplication of a matrix by a column vector forms the linear combination of its columns with coefficients from that vector. Here
so . Equating this expression with reproduces the original three linear equations.
At , the first equation gives , and the second then gives . All nonzero solutions are
At , the first equation gives . The second then gives , and the third is twice the second. Choosing an integer direction vector, all nonzero solutions are
Each full null space, including the zero solution, is a line through the origin. Geometrically, the three homogeneous constraint planes have that common intersection; in each case only two of their equations are independent.
For , a nonzero coefficient vector with is precisely a linear dependence of the three columns. Three vectors in three dimensions are linearly dependent exactly when the determinant of their column matrix, or their scalar triple product, is zero. Thus
For this square homogeneous linear system, the condition is also sufficient.
The direction vectors are and . Their cross product is , with norm . A unit normal to the plane is therefore
The two intersecting directions span the plane, so a vector orthogonal to both is a normal vector to that plane.
The vectors and are eigenvectors: multiplication adds or subtracts the two entries in a row. Their eigenvalues are therefore
The second eigenvalue may be positive, zero or negative as the real parameter changes.
Each prediction is a linear combination of the constant parameter and the coefficient of . Thus the design matrix is
Its th row multiplied by the parameter vector gives the required prediction .