Someone already mentioned determinants. Here is a related $n$-ary operation, the vector product in dimension $n+1$: Fix a basis $b_1,\dots,b_{n+1}$ of $\mathbb R^{n+1}$. To $n$ elements $v_1,\dots,v_n$ of $\mathbb R^{n+1}$ assign the unique vector $v_{n+1}$ that is orthogonal to $v_1,\dots,v_n$, such that $v_1,\dots,v_{n+1}$ is of the same orientation as $b_1,\dots,b_{n+1}$ and such that the length of $v_{n+1}$ is the $n$-dimensional volume of the parallelopiped spanned by $v_1,\dots,v_n$.
Stefan Geschke
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