SYSTEM OF LINEAR EQUATIONS — MATRICES & DETERMINANTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CORE CONCEPT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A system of linear equations is a group of two or more equations with the same set of unknowns (like x, y, z). We want to find values of x, y, z that satisfy ALL equations at the same time. Using matrices, we can solve these systems quickly and systematically. The standard form of 3 equations in 3 unknowns:
a1x + b1y + c1z = d1 a2x + b2y + c2z = d2
a3x + b3y + c3z = d3 This is written in matrix form as: AX = B
Where A is the coefficient matrix, X is the column matrix of unknowns, and B is the column matrix of constants. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
KEY RULES — CONSISTENCY OF THE SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The most tested concept is whether the system is CONSISTENT (has solution) or INCONSISTENT (no solution). Case 1 — det(A) ≠ 0:
The system has a UNIQUE solution. Use Cramer's Rule or inverse matrix method. Case 2 — det(A) = 0 AND the augmented matrix [A|B] has the same rank as A:
The system has INFINITELY MANY solutions (dependent equations). Case 3 — det(A) = 0 AND rank of [A|B] > rank of A:
The system has NO solution (inconsistent). ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━