Testing whether a point lies to the left or right of a line or plane. This problem reduces to testing whether the sign of a determinant is positive or negative. Computing the area or volume of a triangle, tetrahedron, or other simplicial complex. These quantities are a function of the magnitude of the determinant. A closely related function, called the permanent , arises often in combinatorial problems.
G counts the number of perfect matchings in G .
Programs from these books in C and Fortran are also available.