if I have a matrix that is including variables as entries, how can I obtain the determinant? It does not seem like R can handle non-numeric entries in matrices in calculations.
for ex.
z <- matrix(c(1,1,1,"d"),nrow = 2)
then I would want the answer to be like det(z)=d-1 i.e in as a polynomial including the variable d. is this possible with the "det" function in r?
This works:
> library(Ryacas)
> yacas("M := {{1, 1}, {1, d}}")
expression(list(list(1, 1), list(1, d)))
> yacas("Determinant(M)")
expression(d - 1)
However I don't know whether there's a convenient way to defined the matrix M directly from its value in R. Perhaps it's possible; there are some docs to check...
With the new Ryacas package:
M <- matrix(c("1", "1", "1", "d"), nrow = 2)
yac_assign(ysym(M), "M")
yac_str("Determinant(M)")
# [1] "d-1"
