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Dylan Zwick
Fall 2012
This lecture covers section 6.6 of the textbook.
Today were going to talk about a relation between two matrices known
as similarity. If a matrix is diagonalizable we can write it as
A
SAS,
Similar Matrices
MAM.
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Two similar matrices have the same eigenvalues, even though they will
usually have different eigenvectors. Said more precisely, if B = AiAJ.I
and x is an eigenvector of A, then Mx is an eigenvector of B = MAM.
)x. Then as A = A1BM we have
B(iix) =
1O 0
0
has the repeated eigenvalue 0, but is only similar to itself. On the other
hand the matrix
(0 1
0
also has the repeated eigenvalue 0, but is not similar to the 0 matrix. It
is similar to every matrix of the form
cd
2
c
d
2
ccl
C/ /2
-C
c(-12c
Ct
o-
-c t/(Od
0c
I
CQ
fcj
Ji
MAM=
These Jordan blocks are Jordan matrices, and the diagonal terms on
these Jordan blocks correspond to the eigenvalues of the eigenvectors. The
matrix above is called the Jordan form of A, and it is unique up to permuting
the Jordan blocks.
This completely classifies all matrices up to similarity. Pretty neat, huh?
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