Chap.

#10
Properties of Determinants

Arthur Cayley
(1821~1895)

Arthur Cayley's father Henry Cayley (1768-1850), although from a family who had lived for many generations in Yorkshire, England, worked
as a merchant in St Petersburg, Russia. Henry Cayley was married to Maria Antonia Doughty (1794-1875), a daughter of William Doughty.
Henry and Maria Cayley had five children: Sophia Cayley (1816-1889), William Henry Cayley (1818-1819), Arthur Cayley the subject of this
biography, Charles Bagot Cayley (1823-1883) and Henrietta-Caroline Cayley (1828-1886). As is evident from these dates, their eldest child
William Henry died as an infant. The connection with St Petersburg was more than just where Henry Cayley's job had taken him for his
father, Arthur Cayley's paternal grandfather, John Cayley (1730-1795), had served as Consul General in St Petersburg. The family, although
living in St Petersburg, returned to England for the summers and it was on such a summer visit in 1821 that Arthur Cayley was born. His
younger brother Charles Bagot was born in Russia and went on to distinguish himself as translator of Dante and Homer. Arthur spent the
first seven years of his life in St Petersburg where he came in contact with several languages, particularly Russian, English and French - the
international business language there was French. The family returned to live permanently in England in 1828 and took up residence in a
fine house at 29 York Terrace near Regent's Park in London, where Henry, now aged sixty, became a director of the London Assurance
Corporation. It was after the family returned to London that Arthur Cayley's sister Henrietta-Caroline was born there. While we are
describing the Cayley family we should mention that Sir George Cayley, F.R.S. (1773-1857), a pioneer of aerial navigation and aeronautical
engineering, was Arthur Cayley's fourth cousin. There is, however, no evidence of contact between them.
Arthur showed great skill in numerical calculations at a private school in Blackheath and, after he moved to King's College School in 1835,
at age 14 rather than the usual age of entry of 16, his aptitude for advanced mathematics became apparent. However, it was not only
mathematics at which he excelled, for he won prizes in many subjects. In particular, he won the Chemistry Prize in each of his final two
years despite not specialising in science. His mathematics teacher advised his parents that Arthur be encouraged to pursue his studies in
this area rather than follow his father's wishes to enter the family business as a merchant.
In 1838 Arthur began his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, having George Peacock as tutor in his first year. He was coached by William
Hopkins who encouraged him to read papers by continental mathematicians. His favourite mathematical topics were linear transformations
and analytical geometry and while still an undergraduate he had three papers published in the newly founded Cambridge Mathematical
Journal edited by Duncan Gregory. Cayley graduated as Senior Wrangler in 1842 and won the first Smith's prize. After the examinations,
Cayley and his friend Edmund Venables led a reading party of undergraduates to Aberfeldy in Scotland. One of these undergraduates was
Francis Galton who described his tutor Cayley (quoted in [11]):-
Never was a man whose outer physique so belied his powers as that of Cayley. There was something eerie and uncanny in his ways, that
inclined strangers to pronounce him neither to be wholly sane nor gifted with much intelligence, which was the very reverse of the truth ...
he appeared so frail as to be incapable of ordinary physical work.

출처 : http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Cayley.html
The properties of the determinant

1. The determinant depends linearly on the first row.

  ′   ′   ′ ′

 
    

2. The determinant changes sign when two rows are exchanged.

   

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3. The determinant of the identity matirx is .

  .

4. If two rows of  are equal, then det   .

  

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5. The elementary operation of subtracting a multiple of one row from another row leaves the determinant unchanged.

     
  






6. If  has a zero row, then det   

  .

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7. If  is triangular, then det  is the product  ⋯  of the entries on the main diagonal. In particular, if  has
’s on along the diagonal, det   

  .

8. If  is singular, then det   . If  is invertible, then det  ≠ .

 
is singular if and only if     
 

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9. For any two  by  matrices, the determinant of the product  is the product of the determinants :
det   det det   .

10. The transpose of  has the same determinant as  itself: det    det  .

   .

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1. How are det, det , and det   related to det  , when  is  by ?

2. Show by carrying out each step on a  by  examplethat an exchange of rows  and  can be produced by adding
row  to row , then subtracting the new row  from row , then adding the new row  to row , and finally
multiplying row  by  . Which rules could we then use to deduce rule ?

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3. By applying row operations to produce an upper triangular  , compute
          
det 

 










and det 

 








 
.
Exchange rows  and  of the matrix and recompute the pivots and determinant.

4. Explain why
       
det 











  and det 











 .

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5. How many exchange does it take to get (row , row   , . . . , row ) into the normal order (row , . . . , row
  , row )? When is det    and when is det   , for the  by  permutation with ’s on the opposite
diagonal? The previous exercise had   .

6. Find the determinants of :

(a) a rank one matrix


     

(b) the upper triangular matrix
   
 











(c) the lower triangular matrix  
(d) the inverse matrix   
(e) the “reverse-triangular“ matrix that results from row exchanges,
   
 











.

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7. Show how rule  (det  , if a row is zero) comes directly from rules  and .

8. Suppose you do two row operations at once, going to from

        
to  .
         
Find the determinant of the new matrix, by rule  or by direct calculation (and simplification).

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9. If  is an orthogonal matrix, so that    , prove that det  equals   or  . What kind of parallelepiped os
formed from the rows (or columns) of an orthogonal matrix  ?

10. Use row operations to verify that the  by  “Vandermonde determinant” is

  

det 




        .
 
The  by  case is among the review exercises.

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11. (a) A skew-symmetric matrix satisfies     as in
   

    
 .
   
In the  by  case why is det    det  ? On the other hand det    det  (always). Deduce that det
  det  and the determinant must be zero.
(b) Write down a  by  skew-symmetric matrix with det  not zero.

12. True or false, with reason if true and counter-example if false:

(a) If  and  are identical except in the upper left corner, where    , then det    det  .
(b) The determinant is the product of the pivots.
(c) If  is invertible and  is singular, then    is invertible.
(d) If  is invertible and  is singular, then  is singular.

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13. If every row of  adds to zero prove that det   . If every row adds to  prove that det     . Show by
example that this does not imply det   .

14. Find these  by  determinants by Gaussian elimination:

   

 
   
det 





 





and det 
   
   
.

     

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15. Find the determinants of
           
   ,     ,      .
           
For which values of  is    a singular matrix?

16. Evaluate det  by reducing the matrix to triangular form (rules  and ).
        
    
 ,     
 ,     
 .
        
What are the determinants of        and   ?

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17. Suppose that    , and find the flaw in the following argument.:
Taking determinants gives (det  )(det  )  (det  )(det  ), so either  or  must have zero determinant. Thus
   is only possible if  or  is singular.

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 Note

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