January 2017
Intermediate to advanced
768 pages
27h 45m
English
The proof of the theorem on row and column cofactor expansions (Theorem 1 in Section 3.6) involves an alternative interpretation of determinants that in more advanced treatments is usually taken as the original definition. Consider the following elementary scheme for evaluating a determinant:

The first two columns of are duplicated to its right. It is readily verified that det A is equal to the sum of the three products along the indicated diagonals that point down and to the right, minus the sum of the products along the three diagonals that point down and to the left:
Read now
Unlock full access