How to Solve R Error in solve.default() Lapack routine dgesv: system is exactly singular

This error occurs when you try to use the solve() function, but the matrix you handle is a singular matrix. Singular matrices do not have an inverse.

The only way to solve this error is to create a matrix that is not singular.

This tutorial will go through the error and solve it with code examples.

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Example

Let’s look at an example to reproduce to error. First, we will create a 3×3 matrix using the matrix() function:

mat <- matrix(c(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1), ncol=3, nrow=3)

mat

     [,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,]    1    1    1
[2,]    1    1    1
[3,]    1    1    1

Let’s try to get the inverse of the matrix by using the solve function.

solve(mat)

solve(mat)Error in solve.default(mat) : 
  Lapack routine dgesv: system is exactly singular: U[2,2] = 0

The error occurs because mat is a singular matrix. It is not possible to invert a singular matrix. LAPACK is a Linear Algebra package used underneath solve(). DGESV computes the solution to a real system of linear equations A * X = B.

What is a Singular Matrix?

A singular matrix is a square matrix (same number of rows and columns) if its determinant is 0. The inverse of a matrix A is found using the formula A^-1 = (adj A) / (det A), where det A is the determinant of A. If det A = 0 then 0 is in the denominator to calculate A^-1. Therefore A^-1 is not defined when det A = 0.

We can check the determinant of a matrix using the det() function:

det(mat)

0

We can see that the determinant of the matrix is zero, which is why we encountered the error.

Solution

We can solve the error by choosing a matrix that is not singular. The two ways to check if a matrix is singular are if it is a square matrix and its determinant is 0. Let’s look at the revised code:

mat <- matrix(c(1, 3, 3, 4, 12, 6, 7, 2, 9), ncol=3, nrow=3)
mat

Let’s run the code to see the updated matrix:

     [,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,]    1    4    7
[2,]    3   12    2
[3,]    3    6    9

Let’s check the determinant of the matrix:

det(mat)

[1] -114

We have a defined determinant for the matrix. Therefore we can find its inverse using the solve() function as follows.

solve(mat)

          [,1]        [,2]       [,3]
[1,] -0.8421053 -0.05263158  0.6666667
[2,]  0.1842105  0.10526316 -0.1666667
[3,]  0.1578947 -0.05263158  0.0000000

Summary

Congratulations on reading to the end of this tutorial!

For further reading on R-related errors, go to the articles: 

• How to Solve R Error as.Date.numeric(x) : ‘origin’ must be supplied
• How to Solve R Error: Incorrect number of dimensions
• How to Solve R Error in scan: Line 1 did not have X elements
• How to Solve R Error: invalid (NULL) left side of assignment 

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