Help solving a matrices problem.

[shle]

Hi all, I'm having trouble solving the following problem. What I have been doing is setting up the equations and trying to solve for the unknowns. The hint says to pick a non-zero value so I've used 1 and -1, but I don't seem to be getting the answer I need to satisfy Ax = 0 (column vector of 0's).

For example the first equation I have is:
-2(x1) - 4(x2) - 4(x3) = 0 and so on for the other two rows.
(x1 referring to x subscript 1).

Am I not doing this right or should I just keep picking numbers for x3 until I get answers that are correct?

Thank you!

 

[rbcc]

so i guess the hit is telling you that you do something like this

x3=1

for simplicity of notation x1=a and x2=b
then
0=-2a-4b-4(1)
=-2a-4b-4
a=(-4b-4)/2
a=-2b-2

and 1a+14b-5=0
=-2b-2+14b-5
=13b-7
7=13b
7/13=b

a=-2(7/13)-2
a=-3.077

c=x3= 1
-2a-4b-4c=0
c=1

I guess that they are trying to say is that x3 is undefined so this process works