Extra problems on determinants See the Wikipedia entry on the Scoville Scale (ranking the heat of various peppers)

to understand my diculty ratings. This assignment is worth up to three percentage points of extra credit. If you want to try for extra credit, you can hand in attempted solutions to some or all of these problems any time between now and the last day of class. Harder problems are worth more extra credit (so, for example, dont bother handing in only #3). I will not provide any hints whatsoever. Problem 1 (Diculty: Serrano) Find the determinant of 100 1 0 . . . . . . 0 the 100 100 matrix 100 100 100 0 1 100 .. . 0 . .. . .. 0 .. . .. . 0 .. . .. 1 . 100 0 0 . . . 0 100

whose entries are 100s along the rst row, 100s on the main diagonal, 1s directly below the main diagonal, and 0s elsewhere. Problem 2 (Diculty: Scotch Bonnet) The numbers 20604, 53227, 25755, 20927, and 78421 are divisible by 17. Prove that the determinant of the matrix 2 5 2 2 7 0 3 5 0 8 6 2 7 9 4 0 2 5 2 2 4 7 5 7 1 is also divisible by 17, without computing it. Problem 3 (warmup for 4) (Diculty: Peppadew) Let A be an invertible 2 2 matrix with integer entries. Show that if det(A) = 1 or 1, then the entries of A1 are integers. Also show the converse: if A1 has integer entries, then det(A) is either 1 or 1. Problem 4 (Diculty: Trinidad Moruga) Let A and B be 2 2 matrices with integer entries. Suppose that A, A + B, A + 2B, A + 3B, and A + 4B are all invertible matrices whose inverses have 1

integer entries. Prove that the same is true of A + 5B: it is invertible, and its inverse has integer entries. Problem 5 (Diculty: Jalapeo (rst question), Bhut Jolokia (second quesn tion)) Is there a noninvertible 2 2 matrix whose entries are four distinct prime numbers? Is there a noninvertible 3 3 matrix whose entries are nine distinct prime numbers? Problem 6 (Diculty: Serrano) Let Pn be the matrix whose entries are all 1s, except for 0s directly below the main diagonal. For example, 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 P3 = 0 1 1 , P4 = 1 0 1 1 . 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 Find the determinant of Pn . Problem 7 (Diculty: Cayenne) Find the determinant of the matrix 1 1 1 1 2 2 Mn = 1 2 3 . . . . . . . . . 1 2 3

.. .

1 2 3 . . . n

whose (i, j) entry is the minimum of i and j. Problem 8 (Diculty: Red Savina) Given a 44 matrix all of whose entries are 1, 0, or 1, what is the maximal possible value for its determinant? Can you nd such a matrix with a maximal determinant?