catchy phrase for this idiom?

[Bill Baxter]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 1:30 PM, BCS <none at anon.com> wrote:
> Hello Bill,
>
>> Kinda not the same thing if you ask me.  Eigen-blah generally refers
>> to something where you've captured the essence of something better by
>> representing it using a different set of basis functions.
>>
>> This doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with that.  Its just
>> identity or sameness of name.  That's not really what eigen thingys
>> are about.
>>
>
> An Eigen value for a matrix M is a vector V sutch that M x V = V (IIRC)

Close,
If   M v = \lambda  v
Then
\lambda is an eigenvalue (a scalar),
v is the eigenvector (a vector)

--bb