Augmented matrix
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In linear algebra, the augmented matrix of a matrix is obtained by combining two matrices.
Given the matrices A and B, where
Then, the augmented matrix (A|B) is written as:
This is useful when solving systems of linear equations given by square matrices. They may also be used to find the inverse of a matrix. By reducing the matrix into row-echelon form, where the consistency (or inconsistency) of the system can be read off.
[edit] Examples
Let C be a square 2×2 matrix where
To find the inverse of C we create (C|I) where I is the 2×2 identity matrix. We then reduce the part of (C|I) corresponding to C to the identity matrix using only elementary matrix transformations on (C|I).
As used in linear algebra, an augmented matrix is used to represent the coefficients as well as the constants of each equation. For the set of equations:
the augmented matrix would be composed of
Leaving us with:
.