Question

Expansion Numerically Impractical. Show that the computation of an nth-order determinant by expansion involves multiplications, which if a multiplication takes sec would take these times:

n 10 15 20 25
Time 0.004 sec 22 min 77 years 0.5.109years

Answer 1

• number of multiplies is n!
• n=10, 3.6 ms
• n=15, 21.8 min
• n=20, 77.09 yr
• n=25, 4.9×10^8 yr

Explanation:

Expansion of a 2×2 determinant requires 2 multiplications. Expansion of an n×n determinant multiplies each of the n elements of a row or column by its (n-1)×(n-1) cofactor determinant. Then the number of multiplies is ...

mpy[n] = n·mp[n-1]

mpy[2] = 2

So, ...

mpy[n] = n! . . . n ≥ 2

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If each multiplication takes 1 nanosecond, then a 10×10 matrix requires ...

10! × 10^-9 s ≈ 0.0036288 s ≈ 0.004 s . . . for 10×10

Then the larger matrices take ...

n=15, 15! × 10^-9 ≈ 1307.67 s ≈ 21.8 min

n=20, 20! × 10^-9 ≈ 2.4329×10^9 s ≈ 77.09 years

n=25, 25! × 10^-9 ≈ 1.55112×10^16 s ≈ 4.915×10^8 years

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For the shorter time periods (less than 100 years), we use 365.25 days per year.

For the longer time periods (more than 400 years), we use 365.2425 days per year.