definiteness-verdict
At its defaults it draws two conforming builds, one matrix, and 26 different verdicts in 200 tries. Forty 6 × 6 Gram matrices at each of five conditionings, each formed exactly from a tall matrix whose last column is nearly the sum of its first two. Every one of them is asked *are you positive definite* by a Cholesky, once with the inner products accumulated with a single rounding per term and once with each product rounded before it is subtracted. The bar is how many of the forty came back with different verdicts: 7 at 10⁻⁸, 2 at 10⁻⁹, 4 at 10⁻¹⁰, 10 at 10⁻¹¹, 3 at 10⁻¹². The two shaded parts split those by which build was right, settled by the signs of the leading principal minors computed in BigInt rationals — 9 to the fused form and 17 to the rounded one. So neither is the correct implementation. The verdict is a property of the build, and the answer to which build is right is a property of the matrix.
definiteness-verdict is one function in lib/figures/fma.js —
one multiply the compiler removed — a determinant of one computed as zero, and a verdict that is a build's. 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.
Forty 6 × 6 Gram matrices at each of five conditionings, each formed exactly from a tall matrix whose last column is nearly the sum of its first two. Every one of them is asked *are you positive definite* by a Cholesky, once with the inner products accumulated with a single rounding per term and once with each product rounded before it is subtracted. The bar is how many of the forty came back with different verdicts: 7 at 10⁻⁸, 2 at 10⁻⁹, 4 at 10⁻¹⁰, 10 at 10⁻¹¹, 3 at 10⁻¹². The two shaded parts split those by which build was right, settled by the signs of the leading principal minors computed in BigInt rationals — 9 to the fused form and 17 to the rounded one. So neither is the correct implementation. The verdict is a property of the build, and the answer to which build is right is a property of the matrix.
n: 6
The arguments are the ones A matrix that is definite on one machine 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.
Forty 6 × 6 Gram matrices at each of five conditionings, each formed exactly from a tall matrix whose last column is nearly the sum of its first two. Every one of them is asked *are you positive definite* by a Cholesky, once with the inner products accumulated with a single rounding per term and once with each product rounded before it is subtracted. The bar is how many of the forty came back with different verdicts: 7 at 10⁻⁸, 2 at 10⁻⁹, 4 at 10⁻¹⁰, 10 at 10⁻¹¹, 3 at 10⁻¹². The two shaded parts split those by which build was right, settled by the signs of the leading principal minors computed in BigInt rationals — 9 to the fused form and 17 to the rounded one. So neither is the correct implementation. The verdict is a property of the build, and the answer to which build is right is a property of the matrix.
n: 4
The arguments are the ones A matrix that is definite on one machine 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.
Forty 4 × 4 Gram matrices at each of five conditionings, each formed exactly from a tall matrix whose last column is nearly the sum of its first two. Every one of them is asked *are you positive definite* by a Cholesky, once with the inner products accumulated with a single rounding per term and once with each product rounded before it is subtracted. The bar is how many of the forty came back with different verdicts: 5 at 10⁻⁸, 3 at 10⁻⁹, 6 at 10⁻¹⁰, 2 at 10⁻¹¹, 8 at 10⁻¹². The two shaded parts split those by which build was right, settled by the signs of the leading principal minors computed in BigInt rationals — 13 to the fused form and 11 to the rounded one. So neither is the correct implementation. The verdict is a property of the build, and the answer to which build is right is a property of the matrix.
n: 10
The arguments are the ones A matrix that is definite on one machine 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.
Forty 10 × 10 Gram matrices at each of five conditionings, each formed exactly from a tall matrix whose last column is nearly the sum of its first two. Every one of them is asked *are you positive definite* by a Cholesky, once with the inner products accumulated with a single rounding per term and once with each product rounded before it is subtracted. The bar is how many of the forty came back with different verdicts: 3 at 10⁻⁸, 6 at 10⁻⁹, 6 at 10⁻¹⁰, 6 at 10⁻¹¹, 5 at 10⁻¹². The two shaded parts split those by which build was right, settled by the signs of the leading principal minors computed in BigInt rationals — 8 to the fused form and 18 to the rounded one. So neither is the correct implementation. The verdict is a property of the build, and the answer to which build is right is a property of the matrix.
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 4 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 finite double, since an infinity is not a rational
a Gram matrix small enough for exact minors
and it is not the same one
and on each of those exactly one of them is right
two conforming builds return different verdicts on the same matrices
Against the rule
It draws a decomposition and prints its residual. It calls
definitenessCensus,
and every figure above carries the badge — which residualcheck verifies by looking
for it in the emitted SVG rather than by finding the call that builds one. A badge that is
constructed and then left out of the body is the failure that check exists for.
Across the library: the rule bites on 197
of 363 generators —
179 print a residual and
18 are exempt with a published reason;
166 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.
A matrix that is definite on one machine
Two hundred Gram matrices, two conforming builds, and twenty-six of them get different answers to "is this positive definite". The exact verdict, from determinants in BigInt rationals, says the fused build is right nine times and the other one seventeen.
The answer that depends on the machineA rank that depends on the thread count
One 60 × 14 matrix, one threshold, seven partitionings of the inner products that build its Gram matrix — and numerical ranks of 12, 12, 12, 10, 10, 11 and 11. Not a digit of an answer: the number of columns a model built from this matrix would have.
The answer that depends on the machineA square that evaluates negative
(x − 1)⁶ evaluated near x = 1 comes out negative at 179 of 401 points on one build and 196 on another, and the two disagree about the sign at 98 of them. Neither is nearer the truth: both traces are made entirely of rounding.
The answer that depends on the machineA stopping test is a race
One matrix, one right-hand side, one tolerance, thirteen partition counts — and eleven different iteration counts between 674 and 690. Every run converged, every answer is right to the accuracy asked for, and what differs is the bill.
The answer that depends on the machineAccuracy and agreement are different properties
The most accurate policy on this site's summation figure returns 119 different answers, and the one that returns a single answer is four orders less accurate. Neither property implies the other, and the vocabulary has one word for both.
The answer that depends on the machineAn inner product with no fixed sign
‖QᵀQ − I‖ is how this site turns "orthogonal" into a number, and across ten partitionings it moves by 2.4%. The entries it is built from are not so lucky: 125 of the 1,128 off-diagonal pairs take both signs, and one of them takes five different values including zero.
The answer that depends on the machineOne multiply the compiler removed
A determinant whose value is exactly 1, computed as exactly 0 by the expression that is written down, and exactly 1 by the same expression with the multiply and the add fused. Both forms conform to IEEE-754, both are legal compilations of the same source, and nothing in the program says which one you have.
Two errors, and whose fault they areThe fifth author
Four authors of a wrong answer have been named on this site and each is a statement about one computation. The fifth is not: it is what separates two computations that are both correct, it is a backward error of measurable size, and no residual, bound or condition number contains it.
The answer that depends on the machineThe tolerance that buys no agreement
Ask for four more orders of accuracy and you get them — the answers improve by a factor of 1.5 million. The ratio between the best and the worst run is 1.34, 1.48, 1.71 and 1.17 across the same sweep. The band falls and it does not close.
The answer that depends on the machineTwo machines, one certificate
Nothing a solver returns says which of its answers you got. Four things could be reported instead — the summation condition number, the partition count, an exactly accumulated residual and a directed-rounding interval — and each costs about one pass over data the routine already has in hand.
The answer that depends on the machineWhat a regression test can ask for
The machine's own variation on one solve is 3.2·10⁻¹², and the smallest defect whose answers clear it is one part in 10¹². The tolerance exists, it is bracketed on both sides by a factor of 1.42, and it is neither zero nor the 10⁻⁸ that usually gets typed.