How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
One matrix has two distinct row echelon forms but one reduced row echelon form
Example
Over , the matrix has distinct row echelon forms but both reduce to .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: The displayed matrix and two proposed reductions.
Every finite matrix over a field is row equivalent to exactly one matrix in reduced row echelon form (Every finite matrix over a field is row equivalent to exactly one reduced row echelon matrix).
A matrix is in row echelon form when every zero row lies below every nonzero row, the leading entry — the leftmost nonzero entry — of each nonzero row lies strictly to the right of the leading entry in the row above it, and every entry below a leading entry is zero. A row echelon matrix is in reduced row echelon form when every leading entry equals and is the only nonzero entry in its column (Row echelon form, reduced row echelon form, leading entries, pivots, pivot positions and pivot columns).
Over a field , an elementary row operation interchanges two distinct rows, replaces by for a nonzero , or replaces by for distinct and ; two matrices are row equivalent when a finite sequence of elementary row operations transforms one into the other (Elementary row operations and row equivalence for finite matrices over a field).
Verification
The replacement is an elementary row operation of the third kind and takes to ; the scaling is one of the second kind, being nonzero in , and takes to . So is row equivalent to each of and by [L3]. Each has no zero row, leading entries in columns and respectively, and below the leading entry of its first row, so each is in row echelon form by [L2]. Finally because in . The ground field matters here and not elsewhere in the example: over one has , so and coincide and this matrix exhibits no failure of uniqueness.
From , the replacement is again elementary of the third kind and gives , so is row equivalent to by [L3] and step 1.1; its two leading entries equal and each is alone in its column, so it is in reduced row echelon form by [L2]. Applying the same replacement after the scaling of step 1.1 carries to as well, in agreement with the uniqueness of [L1].
Depends on
Used by
Nothing in the library uses this result yet.
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 17 results over 11 levels. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, and this result sits at the bottom with a heavier outline. Click the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- J. Hefferon, Linear Algebra, 4th ed., Ch. One, §III.2 (standard reference, not scraped)