Row echelon form

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In linear algebra, a matrix is in row echelon form if it can be obtained as the result of Gaussian elimination. Every matrix can be put in row echelon form by applying a sequence of elementary row operations. The term echelon comes from the French échelon ("level" or step of a ladder), and refers to the fact that the nonzero entries of a matrix in row echelon form look like the steps of a staircase. For square matrices, an upper triangular matrix with nonzero entries on the diagonal is in row echelon form, and a matrix in row echelon form is (weakly) upper triangular. Thus, the row echelon form can be viewed as a generalization of upper triangular form for rectangular matrices. A matrix is in reduced row echelon form if it is in row echelon form, with the additional property that the first nonzero entry of each row is equal to 1 {\displaystyle 1} and is the only nonzero entry of its column. The reduced row echelon form of a matrix is unique and...

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