Which of the following is not a property of invertible matrices if A and B are matrices of the same order?
Correct Answer :
(AB)⁻¹=A⁻¹ B⁻¹
Solution :
The correct option is (AB)-1 = A-1 B-1.
To understand why this is the correct answer, let us analyze the properties of invertible matrices and of the same order.
First, let us recall the definition of the inverse of a matrix product. The inverse of the product of two invertible matrices and is given by the reversal law:
This shows that the order of the matrices is reversed when taking the inverse of a product.
We can verify this reversal law by multiplying by :
Since (where is the identity matrix), this simplifies to:
Similarly, multiplying in the reverse order yields:
This confirms that is a valid property.
Consequently, the statement is generally not true because matrix multiplication is not commutative in general (i.e., ).
Let us briefly review the other options to confirm their validity:
1. (AA-1) = (A-1 A) = I: This is the fundamental definition of a matrix inverse.
2. (AB)-1 = B-1 A-1: As proven above, this is the correct reversal law for the inverse of a matrix product.
3. AB = BA = I: If two matrices and are inverses of each other, then their product in either order results in the identity matrix .
Therefore, the only statement that is not a property of invertible matrices is (AB)-1 = A-1 B-1.
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