det {base}R Documentation

Calculate the Determinant of a Matrix

Description

det calculates the determinant of a matrix. determinant is a generic function that returns separately the modulus of the determinant, optionally on the logarithm scale, and the sign of the determinant.

Usage

det(x, ...)
determinant(x, logarithm = TRUE, ...)

Arguments

x numeric matrix.
logarithm logical; if TRUE (default) return the logarithm of the modulus of the determinant.
... Optional arguments. At present none are used. Previous versions of det allowed an optional method argument. This argument will be ignored but will not produce an error.

Value

For det, the determinant of x. For determinant, a list with components

modulus a numeric value. The modulus (absolute value) of the determinant if logarithm is FALSE; otherwise the logarithm of the modulus.
sign integer; either +1 or -1 according to whether the determinant is positive or negative.

Note

Often, computing the determinant is not what you should be doing to solve a given problem.

Prior to version 1.8.0 the det function had a method argument to allow use of either a QR decomposition or an eigenvalue-eigenvector decomposition. The determinant function now uses an LU decomposition and the det function is simply a wrapper around a call to determinant.

Examples

(x <- matrix(1:4, ncol=2))
unlist(determinant(x))
det(x)

det(print(cbind(1,1:3,c(2,0,1))))
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