Word.ws English Dictionary

Sylvester's criterion

Sylvester's criterion proper noun: a necessary and sufficient criterion to determine whether a Hermitian matrix is positive-definite: specifically, when all of the leading principal minors have a positive determinant.

Proper noun

Sylvester's criterion

  1. A necessary and sufficient criterion to determine whether a Hermitian matrix is positive-definite: specifically, when all of the leading principal minors have a positive determinant.

Origin of Sylvester's criterion

Named after James Joseph Sylvester.

Questions about Sylvester's criterion

What does Sylvester's criterion mean?
Sylvester's criterion means a necessary and sufficient criterion to determine whether a Hermitian matrix is positive-definite: specifically, when all of the leading principal minors have a positive determinant.
What part of speech is Sylvester's criterion?
Sylvester's criterion is a proper noun.

Words near Sylvester's criterion in the dictionary

  1. sylver
  2. Sylves
  3. sylvester
  4. Sylvester equation
  5. Sylvester equations
  6. Sylvester's criterion
  7. Sylvester's formula
  8. Sylvester-Gallai theorem
  9. sylvesters
  10. sylvestrene
  11. sylvestrian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Sylvester's criterion (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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