V. I. Arnold uses 17 words: "The determinant of a matrix is an (oriented) volume of the parallelepiped whose edges are its columns." http://pauli.uni-muenster

V. I. Arnold uses 17 words: "The determinant of a matrix is an (oriented) volume of the parallelepiped whose edges are its columns." http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html