ABSTRACT
Many complicated expressions, particularly in electrical and mechanical engineering, can be elegantly solved by expressing them in the form of determinants. Further, determinants of orders 2 and 3 geometrically represent areas and volumes, respectively. Therefore, the working knowledge of determinants is a basic necessity for all science and engineering students. In this chapter, we shall briefly sketch the important properties of determinants. The applications of determinants to find the solutions of linear systems of algebraic equations will be presented in Chapter 6.
