# Method option of function MatrixRank

By running ??MatrixRank, I see that it has an optional argument named Method.

However, this argument is not in the documentation for MatrixRank, and I'd like to know what the available alternatives are (the default being Gaussian Elimination from what I can tell from the implementation notes in the documentation). Specifically, I have a very large very sparse matrix for which there may be a significantly faster algorithm than Gaussian Elimination (which seems to be the case from some research online)

Can anyone tell me what the possible values of Method are?

• Not a precise answer to ypur question but might let you allow to compute the matrix rank for huge sparse matrices. – Henrik Schumacher Nov 7 '18 at 10:57
• @Henrik thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the suggestion there uses UMFPACK, which as far as I can tell only works for numerical matrices; in my case, the matrix coefficients are actually polynomials with coefficients in a finite field, so a symbolic method is needed. Do you know of any other possible methods? – Liam Baker Nov 20 '18 at 16:00
• Nope. Sorry, this is not my field of expertise. – Henrik Schumacher Nov 20 '18 at 16:39