Next, letβs attempt to find all of the solutions to:
The augmented matrix for the system is
which reduces to
If we apply additional elementary row operations to this matrix, it will only become more complicated. In particular, we cannot get a one in the third row, third column. Since the matrix is in simplest form, we will express it in equation format to help us determine the solution set.
Any real numbers will satisfy the last equation. However, the first equation can be rewritten as which describes the coordinate in terms of . Similarly, the second equation gives in terms of . A convenient way of listing the solutions of this system is to use set notation. If we call the solution set of the system then
What this means is that if we wanted to list all solutions, we would replace
by all possible numbers. Clearly, there is an infinite number of solutions, two of which are
and
when
takes on the values 0 and 11, respectively.
A Word Of Caution: Frequently we may can get βdifferent-lookingβ answers to the same problem when a system has an infinite number of solutions. Assume the solutions set in this example is reported to be
Certainly the result described by
looks different from that described by
To see whether they indeed describe the same set, we wish to determine whether every solution produced in
can be generated in
For example, the solution generated by
when
is
The same triple can be produced by
by taking
We must prove that every solution described in
is described in
and, conversely, that every solution described in
is described in
(See Exercise 6 of this section.)