S.O.S. Mathematics CyberBoard

Hi all,

I am revising for an exam resit which takes place next week and I'm really stuck on a question from a past exam paper. The question is:

Derive a single matrix to undertake the following collective 2D transformations. A Scaling by a factor of 2 in both X and Y directions followed by a translation by 2 in the X direction and 3 in the Y direction.

Any advice regarding this would be much appreciated as I am pulling out what's left of my hair trying to figure it out.

I think I need to do this first:

Scaling by 2 in both X and Y directions =

X' = Sx * X Y' = Sy * Y

Translation by 2 in X and 3 in Y directions would follow as =

X' = X + tx Y' = Y + ty

Scaling Matrix would be:

|X'| |2 0| |X|
|Y'|=|0 2|* |Y|

Translation Matrix would be:

|X'| |2 0| |X|
|Y'|=|0 3|* |Y|

And now to combine the two matrices in some way?

Please, please PLEASE any help would be great.

Many thanks.

Usually, two transformation matrices are combined into one simply by multiplying them together.

Your scaling matrix works. Your translation matrix does not, and in fact it can't be done with a 2x2 matrix. You need a 3x3 matrix, and you need to add to the vector another component.

Scaling is a linear transformation, but translation is not. Therefore, in order to complete a translation, you will need to use homogeneous coordinates. Instead of writing the vector as (x,y), you need (x,y,1).

Have a look at this and this, then post again with another attempt.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my enquiry aswoods, I really appreciate it.

Would I be correct in saying that the translation matrix would be like this:

| X' | |2 0 0| | X |
| Y' | |0 3 0| | Y |
| 1 | |0 0 1| | 1 |


If so, how do I now derive a single matrix to undertake the scaling and the translation?

Cheers again for the help so far mate.

You need more practice with matrix multiplication! If you multiply that matrix with the vector (x,y,1), you get (2x,3y,1) -- which is obviously not what you want. You want the result to be (2x+2, 2y+3, 1).

The articles I linked to say that scaling by a factor of k looks like this:



Translation by (p,q) looks like this:



Multiply them both out to confirm that this works.

Now, to combine them you can multiply the matrices. If you do A first, then B, then you need it to look like this: B(Av) because you are applying A first, to get Av, then applying B to get B(Av). So the matrix which does both in one go is BA. (If you did B first, then A, it would be AB.)

You will find that the resulting matrix BA (when A is the scaling, and B is the translation) is pretty simple.



Multiply out the right-hand side to check that it works.

Also, check if you are supposed to use homogeneous coordinates in the exam. Maybe they have something different in mind.