Time for action – calculating the determinant of a matrix

To calculate the determinant of a matrix, perform the following steps:

1. Create the matrix as follows:

   A = np.mat("3 4;5 6")
   print "A\n", A

   The matrix we created is shown as follows:

   A
   [[ 3.  4.]
    [ 5.  6.]]
   

2. Compute the determinant with the det function.

   print "Determinant", np.linalg.det(A)

   The determinant is shown as follows:

   Determinant -2.0
   

What just happened?

We calculated the determinant of a matrix with the det function from the numpy.linalg module (see determinant.py).

import numpy as np

A = np.mat("3 4;5 6")
print "A\n", A

print "Determinant", np.linalg.det(A)