Determinant

The determinant of a matrix helps represent a matrix in the form of a number. This number gives a lot of important information about the matrix, including its singularity. Unlike rank, which can be calculated for a matrix of any dimension and is always positive, a determinant can only be calculated for square matrices and can have any scalar value. Determinants are written in two different ways:

det(A)orAdet(A) \qquad or \qquad |A|

The Python function to calculate the determinant of a square matrix is available in the numpy library.

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