Precalculus: Reduce It!

Problem 1 gives students the opportunity to be walked through the reduced row-echelon form of an augmented matrix to solve a 2 × 2 system of equations.

They use the rref command to confirm their answers and then extract from the matrix the solution to the system.

Students think about the reduced row-echelon form of augmented matrices for systems in which there are infinitely many or no solutions.

In Problem 2, students perform the elementary row operation to reduce the augmented matrix for a 3 × 3 system to reduced row-echelon form. They should check their work with the rref command.