Determinants appear often when you are interested in finding the inverse of an operator that is a square matrix. They also appear in tensor calculus, which is the mathematical form in which the General Theory of Relativity is written.
In my 50 years as an applied physicist, I have sometimes had to read texts and articles that used determinants in derivations, but I have only had to actually calculate them when using Cramer's Rule to solve a system of equations.
Sometimes when doing detailed solutions of fluid mechanics problems with viscosity, tensor calculus is needed.
Why are finding determinants important?
Aside from Cramer's rule when are determinants used?
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