Generator

circulant-construction

One function in the chan library, called 3 times across 3 essays. Below: what it draws at its defaults, what it draws at every value an essay asks for, the 5 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 the diagonals of t, and what each circulant puts in their place (n = 16, ρ = 0.9). Entry value against the diagonal index. The Toeplitz matrix's own diagonals fall geometrically as ρ^k. The wrapped circulant follows them to the halfway point and then jumps to the far diagonal, discarding what it passed. The averaged one blends the two throughout, weighted by how many entries each contributes — and the result is nearer to T in the Frobenius norm, 0.2112 against 0.2877.

circulant-construction is one function in lib/figures/chan.js — two circulants — the one that chooses a diagonal, and the one that averages. 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.

The diagonals of T, and what each circulant puts in their place (n = 16, ρ = 0.9)Entry value against the diagonal index. The Toeplitz matrix's own diagonals fall geometrically as ρ^k. The wrapped circulant follows them to the halfway point and then jumps to the far diagonal, discarding what it passed. The averaged one blends the two throughout, weighted by how many entries each contributes — and the result is nearer to T in the Frobenius norm, 0.2112 against 0.2877.0246810121400.250.50.751diagonal indexentryT's diagonalswrappedaveragedtwo routes to one circulantformula against the fit3.3·10⁻¹⁶‖C − T‖/‖T‖, averaged0.21‖C − T‖/‖T‖, wrapped0.29one discards a diagonalthe other weights both

Entry value against the diagonal index. The Toeplitz matrix's own diagonals fall geometrically as ρ^k. The wrapped circulant follows them to the halfway point and then jumps to the far diagonal, discarding what it passed. The averaged one blends the two throughout, weighted by how many entries each contributes — and the result is nearer to T in the Frobenius norm, 0.2112 against 0.2877.

n: 16, rho: 0.9

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.

The diagonals of T, and what each circulant puts in their place (n = 16, ρ = 0.9)Entry value against the diagonal index. The Toeplitz matrix's own diagonals fall geometrically as ρ^k. The wrapped circulant follows them to the halfway point and then jumps to the far diagonal, discarding what it passed. The averaged one blends the two throughout, weighted by how many entries each contributes — and the result is nearer to T in the Frobenius norm, 0.2112 against 0.2877.0246810121400.250.50.751diagonal indexentryT's diagonalswrappedaveragedtwo routes to one circulantformula against the fit3.3·10⁻¹⁶‖C − T‖/‖T‖, averaged0.21‖C − T‖/‖T‖, wrapped0.29one discards a diagonalthe other weights both

Entry value against the diagonal index. The Toeplitz matrix's own diagonals fall geometrically as ρ^k. The wrapped circulant follows them to the halfway point and then jumps to the far diagonal, discarding what it passed. The averaged one blends the two throughout, weighted by how many entries each contributes — and the result is nearer to T in the Frobenius norm, 0.2112 against 0.2877.

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.

5 distinct claims across 2 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 correlation the entries decay at

a size whose diagonals fit on the axis

and it is the nearer of the two

the averaging formula is the least-squares fit

the Toeplitz corner is one number

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 66 of 131 generators — 51 print a residual and 15 are exempt with a published reason; 65 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.

The whole library · All essays · What must fail