Update:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

#Ok, here is an idea for you...

my %scores = ( "Monday"    => ["dishes","1"], 
               "Tuesday"   => ["vacuum","2"], 
               "Wednesday" => ["garbage","3"],
             );

print "@{$scores{Wednesday}}\n";
__END__
Prints:
garbage 3
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%chores = (Monday    => "dishes",
           1         => "Tuesday",
           vacuum    => "2",
           Wednesday => "garbage",
           "3");
[download]

Odd number of elements in hash assignment
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my %chores = (Monday    => ["dishes"  , "1"],
              Tuesday   => ["vacuum"  , "2"],
              Wednesday => ["garbage" , "3"]);

my $value = join ' ', @{ $chores{Wednesday} };
print "$value\n";
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If you want to do calculation with matrices, use a CPAN module such as Math::GSL::Matrix.

What do you mean by "matrix"? There is no object in Perl (at least in the core modules) called "matrix". See perldata.

What you actually need is a hash of arrays. Hashes can contain only (possibly blessed) scalar values, so you cannot just put arrays in the hash. Instead, need to create array references and put them in a hash. See perlreftut for more information on this. For example,

my %hash = (
 one => [ 1, 2, 3, ],
 two => [ 4, 5, 6, 7, ],
 three => [ 8, ],
);
print ((join "\t", (sort keys %hash)),"\n");
my $i = 0;
my $defined;
do {
 $defined = 0;
 map {$defined++ if defined $hash{$_}->[$i]} (keys %hash);
 for (sort keys %hash) { print $hash{$_}->[$i] // " ", "\t"; };
 print "\n";
 $i++;
} while ($defined > 0);
__END__
one     three   two
1       8       4
2               5
3               6
                7
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You could do this using anonymous references...but you will have to dereference to get at the lists

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

#create a hash where each key is matched with an anonymous array refer
+ence

my %chores = (
        Monday => ["dishes","1"],
        Tuesday =>  ["vacuum","2"],
        Wednesday => ["garbage","3"]);

#get the reference to the list stored in the key Wednesday

my $valuereference = $chores{Wednesday};

#make value the list that valuereference is referring to

my @value = @{$valuereference};

#print each element of the list @value, followed by a newline

print $_."\n" for @value;
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I hope that helps :)

Read the documentation about "hash of arrays" in perldoc perldsc (type perldoc perldsc at your command line). Let us know if you still have a problem. )