Linear Algebra I Homework 15

1. Textbook Sec. 4.2 Exercises 22, 25, 26, 30; Sec. 4.3 Exercises 2, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
15, 16, 23.
2. Let An ∈ Mn×n (F ) be the matrix whose entries are 1, 2, . . . , n2 from left to right
and from top to bottom, so for example
 
  1 2 3 4
  1 2 3
1 2 5 6 7 8
A2 = , A3 = 4 5 6 , A4 =   9 10 11 12 .

3 4
7 8 9
13 14 15 16
Find det(An ). What if we replace the sequence 1, 2, . . . , n2 by other arithmetic
sequences?
3. Let F be a field. Let a ∈ F , and let {e1 , . . . , en } be the standard basis for F n .
(a) Find det(ae1 + v, ae2 + v, . . . , aen + v), where v = e1 + · · · + en .
(b) Use the answer from (a) to find the determinant of the n × n matrix whose
diagonal entries are a and all the other entries are 1.
4. Let V and W be F -vector spaces. Let u1 , . . . , un , v1 , . . . , vn ∈ V , and let
 
a11 a12 · · · a1n
 a21 a22 · · · a2n 
A =  .. ..  ∈ Mn×n (F )
 
.. . .
 . . . . 
an1 an2 · · · ann
be an n × n matrix.
(a) Show that if f : V n → W is a multilinear alternating function, and if
vi = ai1 u1 + ai2 u2 + · · · + ain un
for each i = 1, . . . , n, then
f (v1 , . . . , vn ) = det(A) · f (u1 , . . . , un ).

(b) Use (a) to show that det(AB) = (det A)(det B) for any A, B ∈ Mn×n (F ).
(Hint: Consider the special case of (a) where V = F n , W = F , f = det, and
u1 , . . . , un are the row vectors of B.)