Skip to main content
Logo image

Section 8.5 Theory

Subsection 8.5.1 Basic properties of determinants

The following justifies our definition of the determinant as the common value of all cofactor expansions of a matrix.

Proof.

The proof of this theorem is beyond the scope of this course; instead see [2, 3].
Finally, let’s record the determinants of special forms of matrices we discussed in Subsection 8.3.5. However, we omit the proofs since we have already considered in detail the patterns behind the proofs in that earlier discussion.