Consider the 90 degree rotation matrix . We have
This makes sense: two 90 degree rotations compose to give a 180 degree rotation, which sends every point to its opposite point .
We're going to do some examples of matrix multiplication.
Consider the 90 degree rotation matrix . We have
This makes sense: two 90 degree rotations compose to give a 180 degree rotation, which sends every point to its opposite point .
More generally, if are two rotations then the composite is (using trigonometric addition formulas). This is what we expect, of course: rotating by and then amounts to rotating by .
Let be the identity matrix and be any matrix. Then Similarly, . As you can see, the identity matrix really plays the role of the number here.
Let and . Then but This shows that the order in which we multiply matrices matters: . So matrix multiplication is not commutative!
As an exercise, can you think of a matrix which does not commute with ?