Normalizing the Eigenvectors

Next we choose the normalization of these eigenvectors so that the largest element (or one of the equally largest elements) has value 1. Let's call this element \( k \), and we can therefore bound the magnitude of the other elements to be less than or equal to 1. This leads to the inequalities, using the property that \( M_{ij}\geq 0 \),

$$ \begin{eqnarray} \sum_i M_{ik} \leq \lambda_{\rm max} \nonumber\\ M_{kk}-\sum_{i \neq k} M_{ik} \geq \lambda_{\rm min} \end{eqnarray} $$

where the equality from the maximum will occur only if the eigenvector takes the value 1 for all values of \( i \) where \( M_{ik} \neq 0 \), and the equality for the minimum will occur only if the eigenvector takes the value -1 for all values of \( i\neq k \) where \( M_{ik} \neq 0 \).