Thank you, Bill, for your reply. However, I'm afraid I didn't explain myself properly.
Imagine you have a 2x2 matrix Then the eigenvalues lambda_1 and lambda_2 are analytically calculated from lambda_1 = (-b+sqrt(delta))/2a lambda_2 = (-b-sqrt(delta))/2a where delta = b^2-4ac If delta>0 then lambda_1 > lambda_2 always. Otherwise their Real parts are equal. If we have a 3x3 matrix the three eigenvalues will have very complicated expressions: lambda_1 = f_1 lambda_2 = f_2 lambda_3 = f_3 where f_1,f_2 and f_3 are functions of the elements of the matrix a11,a12...,a33, which are sampled from a given distribution (e.g. normal(0,1)). What I would like to know is from which expression (f_1,f_2 or f_3) comes the largest Re part of the eigenvalues. For example, does it always come from f_1 independently of the sampled values of a11,a12...,a33? Thank you ____________________________________________________________ Luís Borda de Água REFER Biodiversity Chair CIBIO - Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources Campus Agrário de Vairão R. Padre Armando Quintas 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal IICT - Tropical Research Institute Travessa Conde da Ribeira N. 9 R/C 1300-142 Lisboa, Portugal Tel: +351 21 361 63 40 ext. 312 [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.