determinants

Noun

determinant (plural determinants)

1. A determining factor; an element that determines the nature of something.
   • Shields and Young (1993) argue that the budget participation literature "has not produced a coherent nor unified definition" of both the determinants and consequences of budget participation.1999, Noah P. Barsky, Stuart Bruchey (editor), Organizational Determinants of Budgetary Influence and Involvement, Taylor & Francis (Garland Publishing), page 4
2. A scalar that encodes certain characteristics of a given transformation matrix; the unique scalar function over square matrices which is distributive over matrix multiplication, multilinear in the rows and columns, and takes the value 1 for the unit matrix; abbreviated as: det.
   • 1966 [Allyn & Bacon], Howard Whitley Eves, Elementary Matrix Theory, 1980, Dover, Unabridged corrected republication, page 165,
     The determinant of a square matrix A_(n) is a function (actually a polynomial function) of the elements a_ij of A.
3. A substance that causes a cell to adopt a particular fate.
4. Something that causes a nuclease to cut at a specified point

See all 5 meanings of determinant