Transcript for:
Understanding Matrices and Scalar Multiplication

In this video we are going to discuss matrices and  focus on multiplying a matrix by a scalar. When I   say a scalar what I mean is a real number. We're  going to take a matrix and we're going to multiply   each entry of the matrix by a real number k  to get the resulting matrix. Let's take a look   at two examples. Here, we have example four,  and in example four we are going to begin   by finding negative one-half times matrix C. When we begin, we want to distribute the  negative one-half to each entry of our matrix C. We will start by writing our matrix with the  negative one-half multiplied to each entry   of matrix C, making sure to keep all  of the positive and negative symbols.  Our second row we do the same thing so I have  negative one half times five, negative one half   times seven, and last, negative one-half times  negative one our final step will be that we will   actually do the multiplication in each  entry so you have negative three halves,   negative three, positive nine halves, negative  five halves, negative seven halves, and positive   one-half as the result of taking and  multiplying negative one-half to matrix C. In example for part b we are going  to look at taking and finding the   operation of negative six B plus seven A and  finding out what our resulting matrix is. First, if you recall from our discussions  on addition matrix B and matrix A must be   the same size matrices. We see that both  are two by two matrices so we can move   on to distributing the scalar to each of our  corresponding matrices. We will start with   taking and multiplying negative six to each entry  of matrix B which gives us negative six times one,   negative six times negative 11, then negative  six times three y and negative six times positive 18.   To that, we will add what happens when  we multiply seven to each entry of matrix A.   So you have seven times negative two, seven times  four x, seven times y and then seven times eight. Our next step is to simplify each entry  in each of our matrices before we add. So I will have negative six, 66,   negative 18y and negative 108. To that I want to add negative 14, 28 x, seven y, and 56. Since we've already discussed adding matrices, I'm simply going to add corresponding entries   and write my final answer. So negative six B plus seven A has a resulting matrix of negative 20, then 28 x plus 66, a negative 11y, and negative 52 as my entries. and again if you  prefer you can always put parentheses around   your entry that had the sum but this is your  resulting matrix when you have negative six B plus seven A.