DET

Purpose:

Computes the determinant of a square matrix.

DET(a)

A square matrix.

A real.

W1: {{1, 3, 4},

{5, 6, 7},

{8, 9, 12}}

det(W1)

returns -15.

a = {{1, 2, 3},

{4, 5, 6},

{7, 8, 9}}

det(a) returns 0, indicating the INVERSE of matrix a does not exist.

A determinant of 0 indicates the matrix is singular to machine precision and the matrix inverse cannot be found.

See DADiSP/MatrixXL to significantly optimize DET.