Question:
If a matrix has 8 elements, what are the possible orders it can have? What if it has 5 elements?
Solution:
We know that if a matrix is of order $m \times n$, then it has $m n$ elements.
The possible orders of a matrix with 8 elements are given below:
$1 \times 8,2 \times 4,4 \times 2,8 \times 1$
Thus, there are 4 possible orders of the matrix.
The possible orders of a matrix with 5 elements are given below:
$1 \times 5,5 \times 1$
Thus, there are 2 possible orders of the matrix.