det                   package:base                   R Documentation

Calculate the Determinant of a Matrix

Description:

     `det' calculates the determinant of a matrix either by QR
     decomposition or from the eigenvalues, see `qr' and `eigen'.

Usage:

     det(x, method = c("qr","eigenvalues"))

Arguments:

       x: numeric matrix.

  method: `"qr"' (default) or `"eigenvalues"'

Note:

     Often, computing the determinant is not what you should be doing
     to solve a given problem.

     The `"qr"' method is much faster for large matrices.

See Also:

     `eigen', `qr', `svd'

Examples:

     (x <- matrix(1:4, ncol=2))
     det(x)
     det(x, method="eigenvalues")

     det(print(cbind(1,1:3,c(2,0,1))))

