Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ib Paper 1 9F c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
Taking the matrix trace of the adjugate expansion and using part (b) givesHence . Taking traces in gives, for ,For , the same formula follows by taking the trace of . Iterating the recursion from part (a) also givesConsequently the Faddeev–LeVerrier algorithm isStarting with , this recursively expresses every using only ; these are the Newton identities for the characteristic polynomial.