118 NUMERIC ALGORITHMS
The basic plan is to divide the first row by the value in the first column and
then subtract multiples of this new first row from each of the other rows. In
our example, the second row would have the new first row subtracted from it,
the third row would have 3 times the new first row subtracted from it, and the
fourth row would have 8 times the new first row subtracted from it. You should
recognize that this would create the proper first column. This new matrix is
We now repeat this process for the second row. After we divide each of the
values in this row by the number in the second column (1.5), we use the values
in the second column of the other rows to determine how much this row is
multiplied by for each subtraction. The new matrix is now (values shown are
rounded)
We now repeat this process, using the third row to clear out the third col-
umn and the fourth row to clear out the fourth column. This gives the next
two matrices:
1 3.5 0.5 2.5 35
0 1.5 2.5 –0.5 10
0 – 8.5 2.5 –6.5 – 72
027 – 117 – – 224
1 0 – 5.33 3.66 11.7
0 1 1.67 –0.33 6.67
0 0 16.7 –9.3 –15.3
0 0 46 – 26 – 44
1 0 0 0.68 6.76
0 1 0 0.6 8.2
0 0 1 – 0.56 –0.92
0 0 0 – 0.24 –1.68
10002
01004
00103
00017