The Jordan canonical form results from attempts to convert a matrix to its diagonal form by a similarity transformation. For a given matrix A, find a nonsingular matrix V, so that inv(V)*A*V, or, more succinctly, J = VA*V, is "as close to diagonal as possible." For almost all matrices, the Jordan canonical form is the diagonal matrix of eigenvalues and the columns of the transformation matrix are the eigenvectors. This always happens if the matrix is symmetric or if it has distinct eigenvalues. Some nonsymmetric matrices with multiple eigenvalues cannot be converted to diagonal forms. The Jordan form has the eigenvalues on its diagonal, but some of the superdiagonal elements are one, instead of zero. The statement