188 CHAPTER 9. LINEAR TRANSFORMATIONS

Theorem 9.2.1 Let T be a linear transformation from Fn to Fm. Then the matrix A satis-fying 9.1 is given by  | |

T (e1) · · · T (en)

| |

where T ei is the ith column of A.

9.2.1 Rotations in R2

Sometimes you need to find a matrix which represents a given linear transformation whichis described in geometrical terms. The idea is to produce a matrix which you can multiplya vector by to get the same thing as some geometrical description. A good example of thisis the problem of rotation of vectors discussed above. Consider the problem of rotatingthrough an angle of θ .

Example 9.2.2 Determine the matrix which represents the linear transformation definedby rotating every vector through an angle of θ .

Let e1 ≡

(10

)and e2 ≡

(01

). These identify the geometric vectors which point

along the positive x axis and positive y axis as shown.

e1

e2

θ

θ

(cos(θ),sin(θ))(−sin(θ),cos(θ))T (e1)

T (e2)

From the above, you only need to find T e1 and T e2, the first being the first column ofthe desired matrix A and the second being the second column. From the definition of thecos,sin the coordinates of T (e1) are as shown in the picture. The coordinates of T (e2) alsofollow from simple trigonometry. Thus

T e1 =

(cosθ

sinθ

),T e2 =

(−sinθ

cosθ

).

Therefore, from Theorem 9.2.1,

A =

(cosθ −sinθ

sinθ cosθ

)