Generator

hierarchy-cost

One function in the amg library, called 7 times across 5 essays. Below: what it draws at its defaults, what it draws at every value an essay asks for, the 7 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 stored entries per row at each level, 400 unknowns and 1192 edges. A rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.

hierarchy-cost is one function in lib/figures/amg.js — algebraic multigrid — a hierarchy with no grid behind it, and what it costs. 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.

Stored entries per row at each level, 400 unknowns and 1192 edgesA rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.01234567110¹10²levelstored entries per rowalgebraicgeometrictwo complexities, one hierarchygrid complexity3.1operator complexity18geometric, for comparison1.5a ring plus random chords — nothing is anywherelevel 6 is 100% dense

A rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.

extra: 2

The arguments are the ones A hierarchy with no grid behind it 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.

Stored entries per row at each level, 400 unknowns and 1192 edgesA rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.01234567110¹10²levelstored entries per rowalgebraicgeometrictwo complexities, one hierarchygrid complexity3.1operator complexity18geometric, for comparison1.5a ring plus random chords — nothing is anywherelevel 6 is 100% dense

A rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.

extra: 0.5

The arguments are the ones A hierarchy with no grid behind it 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.

Stored entries per row at each level, 400 unknowns and 596 edgesA rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.0123456110¹levelstored entries per rowalgebraicgeometrictwo complexities, one hierarchygrid complexity2.2operator complexity6.8geometric, for comparison1.5a ring plus random chords — nothing is anywherelevel 5 is 100% dense

A rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.

extra: 3

The arguments are the ones What the symbolic phase can only bound 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.

Stored entries per row at each level, 400 unknowns and 1587 edgesA rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.01234567110¹10²levelstored entries per rowalgebraicgeometrictwo complexities, one hierarchygrid complexity3.1operator complexity20geometric, for comparison1.5a ring plus random chords — nothing is anywherelevel 5 is 100% dense

A rising curve of stored entries per row against level in the hierarchy, beside a flat one for a geometric hierarchy on a grid.

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.

7 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 graph with between half and four extra chords a vertex

and has levels to cost

and the algebraic hierarchy stores more than a geometric one

on a sparse graph it converges quickly

some level is far denser than the matrix it came from

the grid size is one less than a power of two

the hierarchy converges on the problem it is being costed for

Against the rule

It draws a decomposition and prints its residual. It calls amgSolve, 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 52 of 99 generators — 37 print a residual and 15 are exempt with a published reason; 47 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.

Iterating, instead of factorising

A hierarchy with no grid behind it

On a graph Laplacian the algebraic V-cycle converges at 0.199 a cycle, its grid complexity is an unremarkable 3.05, and its operator complexity is 17.7 — one level of forty-one unknowns is entirely dense. The number people quote is the one that does not measure the work.

Iterating, instead of factorising

An orthogonalisation nobody calls one

Conjugate gradients are derived as a minimisation and behave as an orthogonalisation, which is why the finite-termination property in every textbook is not a property the method has in floating point.

Randomised, and the guarantee that changes kind

The dimension does not appear

A random projection preserves the lengths of a set of vectors to within a distortion that depends on how many vectors there are and not on how many coordinates each one has. That is the fact the whole field rests on, and it is genuinely surprising.

Sparsity, and what elimination costs

The factor is not sparse

A sparse matrix has a factor that is not sparse, and the gap between them is the entire reason iterative methods exist. The entries elimination creates can be counted before any arithmetic runs, from the graph alone.

Sparsity, and what elimination costs

What the symbolic phase can only bound

Without pivoting, the fill can be computed from the graph and the count is exact — 233 predicted, 233 measured. With pivoting it is 233 predicted and 242 measured, and what survives is a bound that is right at every threshold and loose by 1.7 times at the largest grid drawn.

The whole library · All essays · What must fail