Generator

One Householder reflection, and the sign that keeps it stable

One function in the ortho library, called 3 times across 2 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 one householder reflection, and the sign that keeps it stable. A vector, the mirror line through the origin, and its reflection landing on the negative first axis at the same distance from the origin.

householder-reflection is one function in lib/figures/ortho.js — orthogonality — ‖qᵀq − i‖ as a measurement rather than an adjective. 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.

One Householder reflection, and the sign that keeps it stableA vector, the mirror line through the origin, and its reflection landing on the negative first axis at the same distance from the origin.the mirrorx, length 4.000Hx = (-4.000, 0)v = x − αe₁safe sign: α = −‖x‖, so v is formed from a sum and nothing cancelsunsafe sign: α = +‖x‖ gives ‖v‖ only 35.1% of ‖x‖ + ‖x‖ — the digits go‖HᵀH − I‖5·10⁻¹⁶‖Hx‖ − ‖x‖8.9·10⁻¹⁶second component2.2·10⁻¹⁶built from a unit vectororthogonality is structural

A vector, the mirror line through the origin, and its reflection landing on the negative first axis at the same distance from the origin.

x: [3.2, 2.4]

The arguments are the ones A reduction that changes the order passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.

One Householder reflection, and the sign that keeps it stableA vector, the mirror line through the origin, and its reflection landing on the negative first axis at the same distance from the origin.the mirrorx, length 4.000Hx = (-4.000, 0)v = x − αe₁safe sign: α = −‖x‖, so v is formed from a sum and nothing cancelsunsafe sign: α = +‖x‖ gives ‖v‖ only 35.1% of ‖x‖ + ‖x‖ — the digits go‖HᵀH − I‖5·10⁻¹⁶‖Hx‖ − ‖x‖8.9·10⁻¹⁶second component2.2·10⁻¹⁶built from a unit vectororthogonality is structural

A vector, the mirror line through the origin, and its reflection landing on the negative first axis at the same distance from the origin.

What it checked while drawing

Every figure above checked its own claims on the way to being drawn, and a claim that failed would have stopped the picture rather than shipped a wrong one. Those checks 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 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 reflection preserves length agree

and lands the vector on the first axis agree

and the reflection is orthogonal to rounding

matmul shapes agree

reflecting twice returns the vector

the unsafe sign forms v from a cancelling subtraction

with nothing left in the second component

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 217 of 397 generators — 199 print a residual and 18 are exempt with a published reason; 180 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