Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2022 / Paper 1 / 18 / a / Solution

Adding the diagonal entries gives $\mathrm{tr}A=4+4+2=10$. Expansion along the first row gives $\det A=4(8-4)+2(0-8)=0$. For the remaining trace, direct matrix multiplication givesThus $\mathrm{tr}(A^2)=20+20+12=52$. By multiplicativity of the determinant, $\det (A^2)=(\det A{)}^2=0$. Altogether,