Why is it that when I add up the product of cofactors for one row and a corresponding element of any other row , the answer is 0?
For example:

This seems to work for all matrices but I'm unable to figure out why.
Why is it that when I add up the product of cofactors for one row and a corresponding element of any other row , the answer is 0?
For example:

This seems to work for all matrices but I'm unable to figure out why.
Because what you are doing is essentially finding the determinant of a matrix with two identical rows, which is always singular.