Interpret inverse of a matrix

inverselinear algebra

I am new to linear algebra, and I am trying to interpret the inverse of a matrix.

If I have the equation $Ax = y$ and I solve for $x$ as $x = A^{-1}b$, plugging $x$ back in as $Ax$ results in either $Ax = y$ or $Ax \neq y$. How should I interpret this? It seems like the inverse gives the correct answer sometimes and sometimes doesn't without any warning.

In regular algebra if I am able to solve $ax = y$ for $x$, $ax = y$ is always true. Is there anyway of knowing whether my resulting $x$ will give me the right answer in advance, without explicitly checking the result of $Ax$ against my original $y$? I thought the inverse operation is supposed to give you back the original input, but inverse matrix multiplication seems strangely inconsistent.

Best Answer

Consider an invertible $n \times n$ matrix $A$ with entries in a field $k.$ We claim that the $n \times n$ matrix $B$ such that $AB = I_{n \times n} = BA$ (where $I_{n \times n}$ is the $n \times n$ matrix with $1$s on the diagonal and $0$s elsewhere) is unique.

Proof. We will assume that there exists another $n \times n$ matrix $C$ such that $AC = I_{n \times n} = CA.$ Using the associativity of matrix multiplication, we have that $B = BI_{n \times n} = B(AC) = (BA)C = I_{n \times n}C = C.$ QED.

Consequently, we can designate the matrix inverse $B = A^{-1}$ of $A.$ Unfortunately, if you are dealing with an $m \times n$ matrix $A$ with entries in the field $k$ for distinct $m$ and $n,$ then $A$ might have a left-inverse $L$ such that $LA = I_{n \times n}$ or a right-inverse $R$ such that $AR = I_{m \times m}$ or neither but not both.

Consider the $3 \times 2$ matrix in your example $$A = \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 1 \\ 1 & 0 \end{pmatrix}.$$ Observe that this matrix cannot (by the linked post) have a right-inverse; however, it does have a left-inverse $$L = \begin{pmatrix} \frac 1 2 & 0 & \frac 1 2 \\ 0 & 1 & 0 \end{pmatrix}.$$ Ultimately, if we wish to solve $A \mathbf x = \mathbf y,$ we may apply $L$ on the left to obtain $\mathbf x = I_{2 \times 2} \mathbf x = (LA) \mathbf x = L(A \mathbf x) = L \mathbf y;$ however, we cannot conclude from this that $\mathbf x = L \mathbf y$ yields $A \mathbf x = \mathbf y$ because $L$ cannot be both a left- and right-inverse of $A.$

One more comment: the range of $A$ is $\operatorname{span}_k \{\langle 1, 0, 1 \rangle, \langle 0, 1, 0 \rangle \}$ since we have that $$A \mathbf x = \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 1 \\ 1 & 0 \end{pmatrix} \begin{pmatrix} a \\ b \end{pmatrix} = \langle a, b, a \rangle = \langle a, 0, a \rangle + \langle 0, b, 0 \rangle = a \langle 1, 0, 1 \rangle + b \langle 0, 1, 0 \rangle.$$ Consequently, the vector $\mathbf y = \langle 1, 1, 0 \rangle$ is not in the range of $A,$ i.e., the equation $A \mathbf x = \mathbf y$ has no solution.