14.7 Matrix Computation with Excel 441
■Figure 14.11 The final results for Example 14.11.
14.7 Matrix Computation with Excel
During your engineering education, you will learn about different types of physical variables.
There are those that are identifiable by either a single value or the magnitude. For example,
time can be described by a single value such as two hours. These types of physical variables,
which are identifiable by a single value, are calledscalars. Temperature is another example of a
scalar variable. On the other hand, if you were to describe the velocity of a vehicle, you not only
have to specify how fast it is moving (speed), but also its direction. The physical variables that
possess both magnitude and direction are calledvectors. There are also other quantities that in
order to describe them accurately we need to specify more than two pieces of information. For
example, if you were to describe the location (with respect to the entrance of a garage) of a car
parked in a multi-story garage, you need to specify the floor (thezcoordinate) and then the loca-
tion of the car on that floor, specifying the section and the row (xandycoordinates). A matrix
is often used to describe situations that require many values. Amatrixis an array of numbers,
variables, or mathematical terms. The numbers or the variables that make up the matrix are
called theelements of a matrix. Thesizeof a matrix is defined by its number of rows and col-
umns. A matrix may consists ofmrows andncolumns. For example,5 L 6 •
x
y
z
3 N 4 £ ¶
659
12614
580
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