41CL Quiz: Determinant of 30x30 anti-Identity matrix

[brickviking]

(05-22-2018 11:40 PM)Gerson W. Barbosa Wrote:  

(05-22-2018 11:17 PM)ijabbott Wrote:  I suppose just returning the determinant of the anti-identity matrix "by inspection" would be considered cheating? E.g the determinant of the NxN anti-identity matrix is N-1 for odd N, or 1-N for even N.

I would not consider that cheating, although I suggested so in post #13. BTW, there is a typo there: the RPL program returns -29, not 29 (I expected someone would notice it, but apparently no one did).

I noticed it (the typo), but failed to notify anyone else of this fact. And I did note the values swapping signs on increment. I thought that was a bit peculiar, but given I know nothing much about matrix operations, I chalked it up to my inexperience.

And it seems that x49gp is faster than the real 50g by quite some margin, indicating about 3.1 seconds to cough up a -29 instead of the 16.5-ish seconds I'd been seeing. Clockspeed seems to affect this time on the 50g, but not by as much as I'd hoped. I can't raise the clockspeed past 101 MHz before the calculator starts either behaving erratically, or just plain locking up.

(Post 231)