text: For example, consider the same problem from the previous section of a linear chain. The matrix  is the unscaled elasticity matrix:
  In this specific problem there are 3 species () and 4 reaction steps (), the elasticity matrix is therefore a  matrix. However, a number of entries in the matrix will be zero. For example  will be zero since  has no effect on . The matrix, therefore, will contain the following entries:
  The parameter matrix depends on which parameters are considered. In Metabolic control analysis, a common set of parameters are the enzyme activities. For the sake of argument, we can equate the rate constants with the enzyme activity parameters. We also assume that each enzyme, , only can affect its own step and no other. The matrix  is the unscaled elasticity matrix with respect to the parameters. Since there are 4 reaction steps and 4 corresponding parameters, the matrix will be a 4 by 4 matrix. Since each parameter only affects one reaction, the matrix will be a diagonal matrix:
  Since there are 3 species and 4 reactions, the resulting matrix  will be a 3 by 4 matrix
  Each expression in the matrix describes how a given parameter influences the steady-state concentration of a given species. Note that this is the unscaled derivative. It is often the case that the derivative is scaled by the parameter and concentration to eliminate units as well as turn the measure into a relative change.