I have the following system of equations:
and I understand that it translated into the following matrix:
Finally, I understand how to use Gauss-Jordan elimination to change this to reduced row-echelon form:
However, in an example solution that my instructor has prepared, this is then used to find the general solution in parametric form:
No intermediate steps are given. I can see that a similarity in the numbers, but I'm not sure exactly what to do.
It looks like arbitrary letter variables have been assigned to those columns which don't start any row with a one and then these variables are used to complete equations for the columns which do start rows. Is that all this is? Or is there something that I'm missing?
