Accurate and Efficient Expression Evaluation and Linear Algebra

We survey and unify recent results on the existence of accurate algorithms for evaluating multivariate polynomials, and more generally for accurate numerical linear algebra with structured matrices. By "accurate" we mean that the computed answer has relative error less than 1, i.e., has some correct leading digits. We also address efficiency, by which we mean algorithms that run in polynomial time in the size of the input. Our results will depend strongly on the model of arithmetic: Most of our results will use the so-called Traditional Model (TM). We give a set of necessary and sufficient conditions to decide whether a high accuracy algorithm exists in the TM, and describe progress toward a decision procedure that will take any problem and provide either a high accuracy algorithm or a proof that none exists. When no accurate algorithm exists in the TM, it is natural to extend the set of available accurate operations by a library of additional operations, such as $x+y+z$, dot products, or indeed any enumerable set which could then be used to build further accurate algorithms. We show how our accurate algorithms and decision procedure for finding them extend to this case. Finally, we address other models of arithmetic, and the relationship between (im)possibility in the TM and (in)efficient algorithms operating on numbers represented as bit strings.Comment: 49 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Distance to the Nearest Stable Metzler Matrix

This paper considers the non-convex problem of finding the nearest Metzler matrix to a given possibly unstable matrix. Linear systems whose state vector evolves according to a Metzler matrix have many desirable properties in analysis and control with regard to scalability. This motivates the question, how close (in the Frobenius norm of coefficients) to the nearest Metzler matrix are we? Dropping the Metzler constraint, this problem has recently been studied using the theory of dissipative Hamiltonian (DH) systems, which provide a helpful characterization of the feasible set of stable matrices. This work uses the DH theory to provide a block coordinate descent algorithm consisting of a quadratic program with favourable structural properties and a semidefinite program for which recent diagonal dominance results can be used to improve tractability.Comment: To Appear in Proc. of 56th IEEE CD

Kronecker Sum Decompositions of Space-Time Data

In this paper we consider the use of the space vs. time Kronecker product decomposition in the estimation of covariance matrices for spatio-temporal data. This decomposition imposes lower dimensional structure on the estimated covariance matrix, thus reducing the number of samples required for estimation. To allow a smooth tradeoff between the reduction in the number of parameters (to reduce estimation variance) and the accuracy of the covariance approximation (affecting estimation bias), we introduce a diagonally loaded modification of the sum of kronecker products representation [1]. We derive a Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) on the minimum attainable mean squared predictor coefficient estimation error for unbiased estimators of Kronecker structured covariance matrices. We illustrate the accuracy of the diagonally loaded Kronecker sum decomposition by applying it to video data of human activity.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figures, accepted to CAMSAP 201