Matrices and Determinants were discovered and developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Initially, their development dealt with transformation of geometric objects
and solution of systems of linear equations. Historically, the early
emphasis was on the determinant, not the matrix. In modern treatments of
linear algebra, matrices are considered first. We will not speculate much on
this issue.
Matrices provide a theoretically and practically useful way of approaching
many types of problems including:
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