Linear Algebra-Minors and Laplace Expansion

The basic idea here is to reduce a matrix into its components. These components are called minors, and the goal of this is to reduce the minor to a 2x2 form so that you can take the determinant with ab-cd where:
|a b|
|c d|

The Laplace expansion can occur along any column/row and equates the determinant of the entire matrix to the sum of the determinants of the minors. Each minor is multiplied by (-1) to the power of its indices. For example row one column one is (-1)^2 and so is positive, but row two column one is (-1)^3 which is negative

For example:
|a b c|
|d e f|
|g h i|

a
|e f|
|h i|
+
-b
|d f|
|g i|
+
c
|d e|
|g h|