[Numpy-discussion] determinant of a scalar not handled

[Charles R Harris]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Skipper Seabold <jsseabold at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Alan G Isaac <aisaac at american.edu> wrote:
> > On 7/26/2010 12:45 PM, Skipper Seabold wrote:
> >> Right now np.linalg.det does not handle scalars or 1d (scalar) arrays.
> >
> > I don't have a real opinion on changing this, but I am curious
> > to know the use case, as the current behavior seems
>
> Use case is just so that I can have less atleast_2d's in my code,
> since checks are done in linalg.det anyway.
>
> > a) correct and b) to provide an error check.
> >
>
> Isn't the determinant defined for a scalar b such that det(b) ==
> det([b]) == det([[b]])?
>
>
Well,  no  ;)  Matrices have determinants, scalars don't. Where are you
running into a problem? Is something returning a scalar where a square array
would be more appropriate?

<snip>

Chuck
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