Determinants of Matrices of Higher Order
As we said before, the idea is to assume that previous properties satisfied
by the determinant of matrices of order 2, are still valid in general. In other
words, we assume:
1.
Any matrix A and its transpose have the same determinant, meaning
2.
The determinant of a triangular matrix is the product of the entries on
the diagonal.
3.
If we interchange two rows, the determinant of the new matrix is the
opposite of the old one.
4.
If we multiply one row with a constant, the determinant of the new
matrix is the determinant of the old one multiplied by the constant.
5.
If we add one row to another one multiplied by a constant, the
determinant of the new matrix is the same as the old one.
6.
We have
In particular, if A is invertible (which happens if and only if
 ),
then
So let us see how this works in case of a matrix of order 4.
Example. Evaluate
We have
If we subtract every row multiplied by the appropriate number from the first
row, we get
We do not touch the first row and work with the other rows. We interchange the
second with the third to get
If we subtract every row multiplied by the appropriate number from the second
row, we get
Using previous properties, we have
If we multiply the third row by 13 and add it to the fourth, we get
which is equal to 3. Putting all the numbers together, we get
These calculations seem to be rather lengthy. We will see later on that a
general formula for the determinant does exist.
Example. Evaluate
In this example, we will not give the details of the elementary operations. We
have
Example. Evaluate
We have
General Formula for the Determinant Let A be a square matrix of
order n. Write
A = (aij), where aij is
the entry on the row number i and the column number j, for
and
 .
For any i and j, set Aij (called the
cofactors) to be the determinant of the square matrix of order (n-1)
obtained from A by removing the row number i and the column number j
multiplied by
(-1)i+j. We have
for any fixed i, and
for any fixed j. In other words, we have two type of formulas: along a
row (number i) or along a column (number j). Any row or any column
will do. The trick is to use a row or a column which has a lot of zeros.
In particular, we have along the rows
or
or
As an exercise write the formulas along the columns.
Example. Evaluate
We will use the general formula along the third row. We have
Which technique to evaluate a determinant is easier ? The answer depends on
the person who is evaluating the determinant. Some like the elementary row
operations and some like the general formula. All that matters is to get the
correct answer.
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