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Introduction
Determinants are most of the time not very useful:
- The system 0.1 x1 = 0.3, 0.1 x2 = 0.3,
, 0.1 xn
= 0.3 is pefectly well solvable, but |A| will underflow on
typical computers for values of n as low as 40.
- Direct evaluation of a determinant of an
matrix
takes n! multiplications. The big bang was about 
seconds ago; evaluating a 
determinant takes 10100
multiplications. (And allows an interesting possible accumulation
of numerical errors.)
Small determinants may be convenient.
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10/03/01 0:18:39