Eigen Values - Significance

[vishal_prof_gmail_com]

Hi , is 

I am new to the concepts of Eigen Values & Eigen Vector especially the related matrix calculation.

My question what does an Eigen value signify. In Factor Analysis it is a rule by Kaiser Guttman , that number of factors to be extracted should be equal to the number of factors having an eigenvalue (variance) greater than 1.0. Can someone explain this in simple terms and not in vector notations.

Vishal

[Ksharp]

You can take eigenvalue as the variance of covariance matrix . 1.0 means this eigenvalue is big enough to use its eigen vector to map something. or you can say this eigenvalue can explain/represent a big part of variance of matrix .