What does the "adjoint of a matrix" mean to you? I was brought up to understand it to mean the transpose of the matrix of signed minors, a matrix close to being the inverse of the original. Poking around (Wikipedia, Planet Math, Math World) would imply this is known as the "classical adjoint." Hmmm, I'm not that old. Anyway, it is also known now as the "adjugate matrix."
It seems that the term "adjoint" is now more commonly used for the conjugate-transpose of a matrix (and for vectors) and that's what I find in most any relatively new textbook on matrix algebra. Presently, in Sage, "adjoint" gives the "classical" interpretation. I would much prefer to define and implement the adjoint of a matrix to be the conjugate transpose. So two questions: 1. Thoughts on what "adjoint" should be? 2. If adjoint were to be redefined to a more modern interpretation, its current use could be aliased to "adjugate" and deprecated, but that won't make it available for reuse until the deprecation period runs its course. Any precedent, or techniques, for radically redefining a method name? Rob -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
