Dr.

Ahlem Nemer 1

Course : Algebra 3
Year : 2023/2024
Department of Computer Science
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Chapter 1 :
Determinants of matrices

1 Matrices and their properties

Definition 1.1 A rectangular array that is defined by
 
a11 a12 ··· a1n
 a21 a22 ··· a2n 
A= . ,
 
.. ..
 .. . . 
am1 am2 ··· amn

represents an m×n matrix where m and n are, respectively, row dimension and column dimension. The elements
which are denoted by aij are real numbers for 1 4 i 4 m and 1 4 j 4 n.

Example 1.1 Let A be an m × n matrix defined by

 
4 7
A= 1 2 .
0 8

Here, we have m = 3 and n = 2.

Definition 1.2 , Let A = [aij ]m×n be an m × n matrix and Let B = [bji ]n×m be an n × m matrix with bji = aij .
Then the matrix B is called the transpose of A and denoted by AT .
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Example 1.2 Let A be a 2 × 3 matrix defined by

 
1 3 4
A= .
2 0 5

The transpose of A is given by  

1 2
AT =  3 0 .
4 5

Remark 1.1 Let A be an m × n matrix. A is said to be a square matrix if we have m = n

Definition 1.3 Assume that A is a square matrix of order n and let aij be real numbers for all i, j.
1. An identity matrix is an n × n matrix with aij = 0 for i 6= j and aij = 1 for i = j . This type of matrices is
denoted by In .

2. If the elements of A satisfy aij = 0 for i 6= j, then A can be called a diagonal matrix.
3. If aij = 0 for all i ≺ j ( or i  j), then A represents a so-called lower (or upper) triangular matrix.
4. If aij = aji for all i, j, then we can say that A is a symmetric matrix.

Example 1.3 Let

 
1 0 0 0  
 0
  5 6 7  
1 0 0  5 0 6 0
A=
 ,B = ,C =  0 1 3 ,D = ,
0 0 1 0  0 1 1 5
0 0 2
0 0 0 1

and  
3 8 9 5
 8 1 2 4 
E=
 9
.
2 6 3 
5 4 3 1
Thus, we can see that

A is an identity matrix.
B is a diagonal matrix.
C is an upper triangular matrix.
D is a lower triangular matrix.

E is a so-called symmetric matrix.

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Theorem 1.1 Suppose that A, B and C are matrices of order m × n and that α is a scalar. Then we get that

a) A + B = B + A.
b) (A + B) + C = A + (B + C).
c) α(A + B) = αA + αB.
d) (A + B)T = AT + B T .

Theorem 1.2 We assume that A is a matrix of order m × n and that α is a scalar. Take that B and C are
matrices of order n × q, then

a) A(B + C) = AB + AC.
b) α(AB) = (αA)B.
c) (AT )T = A.
d) (AB)T = B T AT .

Remark 1.2 Under the condition that A is a matrix of order m × n, we have

AIn = Im A = A

2 Calculation of determinants
Definition 2.1 Assume that A is a square matrix of order n and that the elements of A, denoted by aij , are
real numbers for all i, j. Let |Mij | be the minor of the matrix A corresponding to aij . Then the determinant of
A is given by
n
X
|A| = aij (−1)i+j |Mij |, (1)
i=1

with j is fixed.

Example 2.1 Consider

 
  3 4 1
3 2
A= , and B =  2 6 7 .
1 2
3 0 4
It is obvious that A and B represent square matrices and their determinants are given by

|A| = 4
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6 7 2 7 2 6
|B| = 3 −4 +1 ,
0 4 3 4 3 0
= 106.

Proposition 2.1 Consider two square matrices of the same order, denoted by A and B, and a scalar α. Assume
that aij are the elements of A. Then the following statements are true.
a) |AB| = |A||B|.
Qn
b) |A| = i=1 aii , in the case where A defines a lower or an upper triangular matrix and in the case where A
represents a diagonal matrix of order n.
c) |αA| = αn |A|.
d) |A| = |AT |.

e) |In + DC| = |Im + CD|, in the case where C is a matrix of order m × n, and where D is a matrix of order
n × m.
f ) |A| = 0 in the case where there exists a column or a row of zeros

3 Invertible matrices
Definition 3.1 We say that B is the inverse of an n × n matrix A in the case where B is an n × n matrix
satisfying BA = In and AB = In such that the inverse of A is represented by A−1 .

Proposition 3.1 Suppose that A is a square matrix of order n. Then we have

|A|In = Aadj(A) = adj(A)A, (2)

where
adj(A) = C T , (3)
with
Cij = (−1)i+j |Mij |. (4)

Remark 3.1 Let A be an n × n matrix and let |A| =

6 0. Thus, we can say that the inverse of A exists and is
defined as
1
A−1 = adj(A). (5)
|A|
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Example 3.1 Find the inverse of A in the case where

 
a11 a12
A= ,
a21 a22
and where
 
3 4 1
A= 5 6 7 .
0 1 2

1) Under the condition that a11 a22 − a21 a12 6= 0, A−1 exists with
 
−1 1 a22 −a12
A = .
a11 a22 − a21 a12 −a21 a11

2) We have

6 7 5 7 5 6
|A| = 3 −4 +1 ,
1 2 0 2 0 1
= −20.

We note that |A| =

6 0, then the inverse of A is
 
5 −7 22
1
A−1 = −  −10 6 −16  ,
20
5 −3 −2
such that
 
5 −10 5
adj(A) =  −7 6 −3  .
22 −16 −2

Theorem 3.1 Assume that A is a matrix and A−1 exists. Then we can say that A−1 is unique.

Proof : We suppose that A1 and A2 are the inverses of A. Here, we can take

A1 A = In , and AA1 = In , (6)

with
A2 A = In , and AA2 = In . (7)
This leads to

A2 = In A2
= (A1 A)A2
= A1 (AA2 )
= A1 I n
= A1
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Then, we deduce that

A2 = A1 , (8)
which means that A−1 is unique.

Theorem 3.2 Let A be a square matrix of order n. We can say that the matrix A is invertible if and only if
the determinant of A is not equal to zero.

Proof :
a) Under the assumptions that the inverse of A exists, we get

|AA−1 | = |A||A−1 |. (9)

This leads to
|I| = |A||A−1 |. (10)
From the fact that |I| = 1 which represents the determinant of a diagonal matrix, we can obtain

1 = |A||A−1 |. (11)

In the sequel, we deduce that

|A| =
6 0. (12)

b) We let
|A| =
6 0, (13)
and know
|A|In = adj(A)A (14)
Here, we find
1
A−1 = adj(A). (15)
|A|
Then, we can say that the inverse of A exists.
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4 Cramer’s rule for systems

Consider the system of linear equations
AX = B, (16)
where A is a square matrix of order n and where B is a column vector. Under the assumption that A is invertible,
there exists a unique solution which is denoted by X and defined as X = A−1 B. Using Cramer’s rule, we are
able to solve the above system and to compute its solution

|Ai |
xi = , f or i = 1, ..., n, (17)
|A|

such that Ai represents a square matrix, after a change of the i − th column of the matrix A by putting the
column vector B.

References
[1] N. Ravishanker and D. K. Dey, A first course in linear model theory, CRC Press, 2001

[2] D. W. Lewis, Matrix theory, World scientific, 1991

[3] V. Sundarapandian, Numerical linear algebra, PHI Learning Private Limited, 2008
[4] Babu Ram, Engineering Mathematics-I (For Wbut), Pearson Education India, 2010
[5] T.K.V. Iyengar and B. Krishna Gandhi and S. Ranganatham and M.V.S.S.N. Prasad , Engineering
Mathematics Volume - II (For 2nd Year of JNTU, Anantapur), S. Chand Publishing