Path counting and random matrix theory

We establish three identities involving Dyck paths and alternating Motzkin paths, whose proofs are based on variants of the same bijection. We interpret these identities in terms of closed random walks on the halfline. We explain how these identities arise from combinatorial interpretations of certain properties of the $\beta$-Hermite and $\beta$-Laguerre ensembles of random matrix theory. We conclude by presenting two other identities obtained in the same way, for which finding combinatorial proofs is an open problem.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures and diagrams; submitted to the Electronic Journal of Combinatoric

Minimizing Communication for Eigenproblems and the Singular Value Decomposition

Algorithms have two costs: arithmetic and communication. The latter represents the cost of moving data, either between levels of a memory hierarchy, or between processors over a network. Communication often dominates arithmetic and represents a rapidly increasing proportion of the total cost, so we seek algorithms that minimize communication. In \cite{BDHS10} lower bounds were presented on the amount of communication required for essentially all $O(n^3)$-like algorithms for linear algebra, including eigenvalue problems and the SVD. Conventional algorithms, including those currently implemented in (Sca)LAPACK, perform asymptotically more communication than these lower bounds require. In this paper we present parallel and sequential eigenvalue algorithms (for pencils, nonsymmetric matrices, and symmetric matrices) and SVD algorithms that do attain these lower bounds, and analyze their convergence and communication costs.Comment: 43 pages, 11 figure

Toward accurate polynomial evaluation in rounded arithmetic

Given a multivariate real (or complex) polynomial $p$ and a domain $\cal D$, we would like to decide whether an algorithm exists to evaluate $p(x)$ accurately for all $x \in {\cal D}$ using rounded real (or complex) arithmetic. Here ``accurately'' means with relative error less than 1, i.e., with some correct leading digits. The answer depends on the model of rounded arithmetic: We assume that for any arithmetic operator $op(a,b)$, for example $a+b$ or $a \cdot b$, its computed value is $op(a,b) \cdot (1 + \delta)$, where $| \delta |$ is bounded by some constant $\epsilon$ where $0 < \epsilon \ll 1$, but $\delta$ is otherwise arbitrary. This model is the traditional one used to analyze the accuracy of floating point algorithms.Our ultimate goal is to establish a decision procedure that, for any $p$ and $\cal D$, either exhibits an accurate algorithm or proves that none exists. In contrast to the case where numbers are stored and manipulated as finite bit strings (e.g., as floating point numbers or rational numbers) we show that some polynomials $p$ are impossible to evaluate accurately. The existence of an accurate algorithm will depend not just on $p$ and $\cal D$, but on which arithmetic operators and which constants are are available and whether branching is permitted. Toward this goal, we present necessary conditions on $p$ for it to be accurately evaluable on open real or complex domains ${\cal D}$. We also give sufficient conditions, and describe progress toward a complete decision procedure. We do present a complete decision procedure for homogeneous polynomials $p$ with integer coefficients, {\cal D} = \C^n, and using only the arithmetic operations $+$, $-$ and $\cdot$.Comment: 54 pages, 6 figures; refereed version; to appear in Foundations of Computational Mathematics: Santander 2005, Cambridge University Press, March 200