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General

Matrix multiplication is defined in terms of the row-column product:

where

In other words, cij is the dot product of the i-th row-vector of A times the j-th column-vector of B:

(Here the first row of A is written as , the second row as , etc. Similar, the first column of B is ,etc.)

The dots in the above product can be omitted since the matrix product of a row vector times a column vector is by definition the same as the dot product of those vectors.

Multiplication in index notation:

The summation is over neighboring indices.

For matrices to be multiplied, the second dimension of A must be the same as the first dimension of B.

Matrix multiplication does not ordinarily commute:


Next: Unit matrix Up: Matrix multiplication Previous: Matrix multiplication