Determinant by Gaussian elimination
Finding matrix determinant using Gaussian elimination in complex, rational or real numbers.
This content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 (Unported). That means you may freely redistribute or modify this content under the same license conditions and must attribute the original author by placing a hyperlink from your site to this work https://planetcalc.com/8351/. Also, please do not modify any references to the original work (if any) contained in this content.
We already have the matrix determinant calculator, but it employs a straightforward algorithm with complexity O(n!), which makes it unusable for big matrices. The following calculator performs the same task in O(n3) operations. It uses Gaussian elimination to convert an input matrix to the triangular form. The calculator supports rational and complex numbers.
Determinant properties used by the calculator algorithm
- The calculator converts the input matrix to the triangular form to calculate the matrix determinant by multiplying its main diagonal elements.
- The conversion is performed by subtracting one row from another multiplied by a scalar coefficient. This operation doesn't change the determinant.
- The calculator swaps two rows if zero appears in the main diagonal. It counts a number of row swaps to change the determinant sign according to the number of swaps (each swap changes the result sign).
- It stops calculation if a zero column is found since the determinant becomes zero in this case.
The determinant has several other interesting properties not used by this calculator (see Wikipedia).
Comments