COLUMN:
VECTOR
JUUUUST
A BIT OFF
IT'S THE LEAST
WE COULD DO
BREAKING DOWN
THE MATRIX
EIGEN, I GUESS?
200

When computing this measure of x in bbb C^n, the only thing that matters is its absolutely largest component

What is the "infinity norm"?

200

A matrix is said to have this "unhealthy" property when ||A|| ||A^(-1)|| is large

What is "ill-conditioned"?

200

This bread-and-butter technique for solving Ax=b might have been invented in China as early as 150 BCE

What is "Gaussian elimination"?

200

If you want Ax=b to have a unique solution, the matrix better have one of these subspaces in its domain

What is a "trivial nullspace"?

400

A non-orthogonal pair x,y might still produce x^Ty = 0 if x,y are both this type of vector

What is "complex-valued"?

400

This basic procedure for A = QR isn't even numerically stable (it should probably get therapy!)

What is "Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization"?

400

Straighten up and fly "right": this decomposition gives you an orthonormal basis for R(A)

What is the "QR factorization"?

400

Hmm... this kind of matrix doesn't seem to do ANYTHING to the inner product of x and y:

(:Mx,My:) = (:x,y:)

What is a "unitary matrix"?

400

When it comes to eigenvalues, these elements of bbb C^(n xx n) know how to "keep it bbb R"

What are "Hermitian matrices"?

600

Checking if rank([a_1 cdots a_n]) = n is a good way to determine if the set of vectors {a_1,ldots,a_n} has this standout property

What is "linear independence"?

600

This term applies to algorithms which "give you exactly what you almost asked for"

What is "backwards stable"?

600

The SVD of A in bbb C^(m xx n) gives you two of these special matrices, as well as one matrix of this other type?

What are "unitary matrices and a diagonal matrix"?

600

The quantity ||A||_M *||x|| is a bound for ||Ax|| whenever ||*||_M is one of these functions

What is a "consistent matrix norm"?

800

Use the formula (u^**v)/(u^**u)u to compute this new vector, which can be though of as "forcing one vector to align with another"

What is the "projection of v onto u"?

800

These "polynomial points" are (famously) ill-conditioned as a function of their standard basis coefficients

What are "polynomial roots"?

800

The minimizer of min_x||Ax-b||_2^2 is unique when A has this this status

What is "full column rank"?

800

There's a lot of V-shapes in the equation for this important factorization:

AV =V Lambda

What is an "eigendecomposition"?
800

Beware! If these two values don't match, you're gonna have a hard time finding an eigenbasis for lambda

What are "geometric and algebraic multiplicity"?

1000

If a stable algorithm isn't accurate enough on your machine, find a computer with an improved level of this exacting quantity

What is "floating-point precision"?

1000

It's a bad idea in practice to set up and solve these "standard relations" for the least-squares problem

What are the "normal equations"?

1000

Our friend Cholesky is confident that you can write A = LL^T as long as A is one of these matrices.

What is a "symmetric positive-definite matrix"?