A simple demonstration of the existence of the jordan canonical form for any square matrix

• Autor(a) principal: Nicol, Robert Norman Vivian Cajado
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/6871
• topic: Economia; Economia

All the demonstrations known to this author of the existence of the Jordan Canonical Form are somewhat complex - usually invoking the use of new spaces, and what not. These demonstrations are usually too difficult for an average Mathematics student to understand how he or she can obtain the Jordan Canonical Form for any square matrix. The method here proposed not only demonstrates the existence of such forms but, additionally, shows how to find them in a step by step manner. I do not claim that the following demonstration is in any way 'elegant' (by the standards of elegance in fashion nowadays among mathematicians) but merely simple (undergraduate students taking a fist course in Matrix Algebra would understand how it works).