Generator

block-width-cost

One function in the blocksize library, called 9 times across 8 essays. Below: what it draws at its defaults, what it draws at every value an essay asks for, the 8 claims it put to the test while drawing them, and where it stands against the rule this site is named for.

At its defaults it draws products with a to return all 2 copies, against the block width. One bar per block width. Widths below 2 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 2, at 32 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.

block-width-cost is one function in lib/figures/blocksize.js — how wide the block should be — the multiplicity, and the deflation that never fires. Everything below came out of it during this build, at arguments taken from the essays rather than invented for this page. A figure here is the figure a reader meets in an essay, and if the generator changes, this page changes with it.

At its defaults

Drawn even though every essay passes arguments — which on this site is every essay, at 100% of placements since the standard pass. A default nothing exercises is a trap for the next essay to call this with none, and this is the page where a default that has drifted from the figures around it becomes visible.

Products with A to return all 2 copies, against the block widthOne bar per block width. Widths below 2 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 2, at 32 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.an eigenvalue repeated 2 times, in a 200-dimensional problemblock of 1never returns them allblock of 232 products, 16 stepsblock of 351 products, 17 stepsblock of 460 products, 15 stepsblock of 570 products, 14 stepsblock of 684 products, 14 stepsthe narrowest that workscheapest width2its products with A32the widest drawn84narrower than the multiplicity is not slowit is absent

One bar per block width. Widths below 2 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 2, at 32 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.

mult: 4

The arguments are the ones A threshold between fill and growth passes. A value drawn at the generator's defaults instead would be a picture no essay asked for and no assertion has been run against.

Products with A to return all 4 copies, against the block widthOne bar per block width. Widths below 4 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 4, at 64 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.an eigenvalue repeated 4 times, in a 200-dimensional problemblock of 1never returns them allblock of 2never returns them allblock of 3never returns them allblock of 464 products, 16 stepsblock of 575 products, 15 stepsblock of 684 products, 14 stepsthe narrowest that workscheapest width4its products with A64the widest drawn84narrower than the multiplicity is not slowit is absent

One bar per block width. Widths below 4 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 4, at 64 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.

mult: 3

The arguments are the ones An eigenvalue one vector cannot see passes. A value drawn at the generator's defaults instead would be a picture no essay asked for and no assertion has been run against.

Products with A to return all 3 copies, against the block widthOne bar per block width. Widths below 3 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 3, at 51 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.an eigenvalue repeated 3 times, in a 200-dimensional problemblock of 1never returns them allblock of 2never returns them allblock of 351 products, 17 stepsblock of 460 products, 15 stepsblock of 570 products, 14 stepsblock of 684 products, 14 stepsthe narrowest that workscheapest width3its products with A51the widest drawn84narrower than the multiplicity is not slowit is absent

One bar per block width. Widths below 3 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 3, at 51 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.

mult: 2

The arguments are the ones An eigenvalue that arrives twice passes. A value drawn at the generator's defaults instead would be a picture no essay asked for and no assertion has been run against.

Products with A to return all 2 copies, against the block widthOne bar per block width. Widths below 2 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 2, at 32 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.an eigenvalue repeated 2 times, in a 200-dimensional problemblock of 1never returns them allblock of 232 products, 16 stepsblock of 351 products, 17 stepsblock of 460 products, 15 stepsblock of 570 products, 14 stepsblock of 684 products, 14 stepsthe narrowest that workscheapest width2its products with A32the widest drawn84narrower than the multiplicity is not slowit is absent

One bar per block width. Widths below 2 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 2, at 32 products with A; the widest drawn costs 84.

mult: 1

The arguments are the ones Structure and stability stop being separable passes. A value drawn at the generator's defaults instead would be a picture no essay asked for and no assertion has been run against.

Products with A to return all 1 copy, against the block widthOne bar per block width. Widths below 1 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 1, at 19 products with A; the widest drawn costs 78.an eigenvalue repeated 1 time, in a 200-dimensional problemblock of 119 products, 19 stepsblock of 232 products, 16 stepsblock of 348 products, 16 stepsblock of 460 products, 15 stepsblock of 565 products, 13 stepsblock of 678 products, 13 stepsthe narrowest that workscheapest width1its products with A19the widest drawn78narrower than the multiplicity is not slowit is absent

One bar per block width. Widths below 1 return fewer copies than the eigenvalue has, at every step count up to a basis of half the problem's dimension, and are marked rather than drawn. The cheapest width that works is 1, at 19 products with A; the widest drawn costs 78.

What it checked while drawing

Every figure above asserted its own claims on the way to being drawn, and a claim that failed would have failed the build rather than drawn a wrong picture. Those assertions used to leave no trace at all: a passing one returned true and the only evidence the figure had checked anything was that nothing crashed. The list below is what they actually said, collected by running this generator with an observer installed — not a description of what it is believed to check.

8 distinct claims across 5 sets of arguments, grouped below by shape — because most of them are one sentence with a different number in it, and how many separate times that sentence was put to the test is the informative part.

a multiplicity the spectrum is built for

a size the dense reference is affordable at

and every width at or above it works

Jacobi needs a symmetric matrix

matmul shapes agree

only the widths below the multiplicity fail

the cheapest working width is the multiplicity itself

widths on both sides of the multiplicity

Against the rule

The rule does not apply to it. It factorises nothing, so there is no residual it could be withholding. That is worth stating rather than leaving blank: a site that reported the rule as satisfied by every generator would be counting mostly generators the rule never reached.

Across the library: the rule bites on 70 of 151 generators — 55 print a residual and 15 are exempt with a published reason; 81 factorise nothing. Read from lib/residual-rule.js, which is the same body the gate enforces from, and the gate's last check fails the build if this page and it disagree about any generator.

Where it is called

Changing this generator changes every figure on this list. That is what makes the list worth publishing rather than keeping in a check script.

Sparsity, and what elimination costs

A threshold between fill and growth

One number decides how small a pivot an elimination will accept. At 0.001 the factor holds 172 entries and the matrix grows by 1,330; at 1 it holds 260 and grows by 1.2. The libraries ship 0.1, and the measurement says why.

Eigenvalues, singular values, rank

An eigenvalue one vector cannot see

A matrix with an exactly doubled eigenvalue at 10. Twelve Lanczos steps find it once; twenty-four find it once, on a Krylov space of dimension 23 in a 24-dimensional problem. A block of two vectors finds it twice. This is not slow convergence — the second copy is not in the space.

Eigenvalues, singular values, rank

An eigenvalue that arrives twice

A matrix with forty distinct eigenvalues, handed to Lanczos for eighty steps, returns twenty-five extra copies of thirteen of them — the largest arriving five times. Every copy is accurate to 1.9·10⁻⁸ relative. No arithmetic error was made, nothing overflowed, and a caller counting eigenvalues gets the wrong multiplicity from a computation in which no individual number is wrong.

Eigenvalues, singular values, rank

How wide the block should be

A block narrower than the multiplicity does not converge slowly — it never returns the missing copy at all. Above the multiplicity every extra column buys iterations at about ten products with A each. And the mechanism that is supposed to make the choice unimportant never fires from a random start.

Sparsity, and what elimination costs

Structure and stability stop being separable

The sparsest variable to eliminate on this matrix has a diagonal entry of 10⁻¹². Eliminating it produces the smaller factor, reproduces the matrix to 3.8·10⁻¹⁷ — better than pivoting does — and returns an answer wrong in the fifth digit.

Eigenvalues, singular values, rank

Symmetry is worth more than precision

A symmetric matrix gives up its eigenvalues to full accuracy however ill-conditioned it is. An unsymmetric one can move them by the eighth root of a perturbation, so the rounding involved in merely storing the matrix shifts the spectrum by a hundredth.

Eigenvalues, singular values, rank

The gap decides the eigenvector

A symmetric matrix's eigenvalues move by at most the size of the perturbation, whatever the spectrum looks like. Its eigenvectors are governed by a completely different quantity — the distance to the neighbouring eigenvalue — and at a gap of 10⁻⁹ the same perturbation turns them through 27°.

Eigenvalues, singular values, rank

The plane survives what its vectors do not

At a gap of 10⁻⁹ a perturbation of 10⁻⁶ turns the two eigenvectors through half a radian and turns the plane they span through 7.6·10⁻⁸ — a ratio of six million. Ask for the subspace instead of the vectors and a hopeless computation becomes a well-conditioned one, with no change to the arithmetic.

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