8.2. MULTIPLICATION OF MATRICES 133

Definition 8.2.1 An m×n matrix is a rectangular array of numbers which has m rows andn columns. We write this as

A =

A11 A12 · · · A1n

A21 A22 · · · A2n...

......

Am1 An2 · · · Amn

Thus the entry in the ith row and the jth column is denoted as Ai j. As suggested above,

A x=

A11 A12 · · · A1n

A21 A22 · · · A2n...

......

Am1 An2 · · · Amn



x1

x2...

xn



= x1

A11

A21...

Am1

+ x2

A12

A22...

An2

+ · · ·+ xn

A1n

A2n...

Amn

Note that Ax is in Fm and the ith entry of this vector Ax is

Ai1x1 +Ai2x2 + · · ·+Ainxn =n

∑j=1

Ai jx j.

In other words, the ith entry of Ax is the dot product of the ith row of A with the vector x.Symbolically,

(Ax)i = ∑j

Ai jx j (8.9)

We like to write x to denote an n× 1 matrix which is often called a vector. Then xT willdenote a 1×n matrix or row vector.

Example 8.2.2 (1 2 11 0 2

) x1

x2

x3

= x1

(11

)+ x2

(20

)+ x3

(12

)=

(x1 +2x2 + x3

x1 +2x3

)Note that if A is m×n then Ax is an m×1 matrix provided x is n×1. Thus A makes a

vector in Fn into a vector in Fm.

Example 8.2.3 Show the following: 1 −1 23 2 12 3 −3

 1

23

=

 510−1

