numpy.linalg.slogdet()

Compute the sign and (natural) logarithm of the determinant of an array.

If an array has a very small or very large determinant, then a call to det may overflow or underflow. This routine is more robust against such issues, because it computes the logarithm of the determinant rather than the determinant itself.

Notes

Broadcasting rules apply, see the numpy.linalg documentation for details.

The determinant is computed via LU factorization using the LAPACK routine z/dgetrf.

Examples

The determinant of a 2-D array [[a, b], [c, d]] is ad - bc:

>>> a = np.array([[1, 2], [3, 4]])
>>> (sign, logdet) = np.linalg.slogdet(a)
>>> (sign, logdet)
(-1, 0.69314718055994529)
>>> sign * np.exp(logdet)
-2.0

Computing log-determinants for a stack of matrices:

>>> a = np.array([ [[1, 2], [3, 4]], [[1, 2], [2, 1]], [[1, 3], [3, 1]] ])
>>> a.shape
(3, 2, 2)
>>> sign, logdet = np.linalg.slogdet(a)
>>> (sign, logdet)
(array([-1., -1., -1.]), array([ 0.69314718,  1.09861229,  2.07944154]))
>>> sign * np.exp(logdet)
array([-2., -3., -8.])

This routine succeeds where ordinary det does not:

>>> np.linalg.det(np.eye(500) * 0.1)
0.0
>>> np.linalg.slogdet(np.eye(500) * 0.1)
(1, -1151.2925464970228)