Math 21b: Linear Algebra Spring 2018

Homework 16: Determinants

This homework is due on Friday, March 9, respectively on Tuesday, March 20, 2018.

1 Find the determinants of A, B, C:  

 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 
   
0 5 7 3 7 1   1 1 0 0 0 3  
 0 0 0 0 0 1 6 
  
 
6 0 0 0 0 1   3 3 0 0 6 0 
    
   
 0 0 0 0 2 2 5 
   
 
0 4 0 3 1 1   4 2 0 4 0 0 
    
   
A= , B =  , C =  0 0 0 3 1 1 2 
   
  
0 0 0 0 0 3   5 3 2 0 0 0 

   
 0 0 4 7 3 4 7 
   
 
0 6 0 1 0 0   6 3 0 0 4 0 
    
   
 0 5 9 6 4 8 2 
   
 
0 0 0 2 0 0 7 0 5 0 0 0
    

6 8 6 8 0 9 1
 

2 Without doing much computation, determine whether the follow-

ing determinant is positive, zero or negative:
 
9


21 20 7 −6 3 9 
209 3 2 2 2 2 
 



6 4 91 1 209 −1 
 

 .


2 2 209 1 −5 9 




9 1 −1 209 2 2 
 



7 4 −1 2 4 209
 

3 a) Use the Leibniz definition of determinants

 
to show that the
 A C 
partitioned matrix satisfies det   = det(A)det(B).
0 B


b) Assume now that A, 

B are n × n matrices. Can you find a
 0 A 
formula for det  ? (It will depend on n.)
B 0


c) Show that number of up-crossings of a pattern is the same if the

pattern is transposed and that therefore det(AT ) = det(A).
4 Find

the determinant

of the matrix Aij = 2ij for i, j ≤ 4. It is
2 4 8 16
 4 16 64 256
First scale some rows to make the computa-

.
 
 8 64 512 4096


16 256 4096 65536
tion more managable.
5 Use Laplace expansion to find a formula for the determinant of
the 5 × 5 matrix L(5) which has 2 in the diagonal and 1 in the
side diagonals and 0 everywhere else. Find
 first the determinants

 2 1 0 0 0 
 
 1 2 1 0 0 
 
 
 
of L(2), L(3), L(4) and then L(5) =  0 1 2 1 0 . Can you
 


 0 0 1 2 1 
 
 
 
0 0 0 1 2
 

see how it continues? Optional: If you dare, try to prove your

conjecture.

Determinants I

The determinant of a n × n matrix A is defined as the sum

|π|
π (−1) A1π(1) A2π(2) · · · Anπ(n) , where π is a permutation of
P

{1, 2, . . . , n } and |π| is the number of up-crossings in the pat-

tern given by π. This is the Leibniz definition of determinants.
By grouping the patterns according of the position in the first
column, we get immediately the Laplace expansion det(A) =
(−1)1+1A11det(Bi1)+· · ·+(−1)1+nAn1det(Bn1), where for each
entry aj1 in the first column form the (n − 1) × (n − 1) matrix
Bj1 in which the first column and the j’th row of A are deleted.