Re: mathematica newbie question
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg66900] Re: mathematica newbie question
- From: albert <awnl at arcor.de>
- Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 03:25:26 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <e5osv8$i51$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Jeremy Watts wrote: > Hi, > > Just trying to get to grips with Mathematica and matrices. Why is it when > I enter :- > {0, 0, 0}, {1, -1, -1}, {-1, 1, 1}}^2 > > then Mathematica returns :- > > {{0, 0, 0}, {1, 1, 1}, {1, 1, 1}} > > and not {{0,0,0},{0,0,0},{0,0,0}} (the actual square of the matrix) as I'd > have expected? > > Is it treating what I entered as separate vectors or something, and not > an actual matrix? Yes, what you want is Dot (.) not Power(*), and x^2 maps to x*x for matrices also. This does what you want: m = {0, 0, 0}, {1, -1, -1}, {-1, 1, 1}} MatrixPower[x,2] or: m.m hth, albert