refuse-or-lie
At its defaults it draws past the cliff: what each method returns. Loss of orthogonality at four condition numbers past κ²u = 1. Cholesky QR returns a factor whose implied Q is 0.37 away from orthogonal at κ = 10⁸ and 1.49 at 10¹² — and at 3·10¹⁰ it refuses outright, on a pivot of -6.5·10⁻¹⁷. The sweep and the tree return a usable factorisation of every one of these matrices.
refuse-or-lie is one function in lib/figures/parallel.js —
messages — the count words cannot make, and what the fewest of them 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.
Loss of orthogonality at four condition numbers past κ²u = 1. Cholesky QR returns a factor whose implied Q is 0.37 away from orthogonal at κ = 10⁸ and 1.49 at 10¹² — and at 3·10¹⁰ it refuses outright, on a pivot of -6.5·10⁻¹⁷. The sweep and the tree return a usable factorisation of every one of these matrices.
n: 8
The arguments are the ones A bound that is proved 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.
Loss of orthogonality at four condition numbers past κ²u = 1. Cholesky QR returns a factor whose implied Q is 0.37 away from orthogonal at κ = 10⁸ and 1.49 at 10¹² — and at 3·10¹⁰ it refuses outright, on a pivot of -6.5·10⁻¹⁷. The sweep and the tree return a usable factorisation of every one of these matrices.
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.
11 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 matrix tall enough for the slices to be tall
and it succeeds on a harder matrix than one it declined
and returns a wholly non-orthogonal factor somewhere else in it
Cholesky QR refuses somewhere in this range
condition numbers past where κ²u passes one
each row block is at least as tall as it is wide
matmul shapes agree
the sweep still returns something usable at κ = 10¹⁰
the sweep still returns something usable at κ = 10¹²
the sweep still returns something usable at κ = 10⁸
the sweep still returns something usable at κ = 3·10¹⁰
Against the rule
It draws a decomposition and prints its residual. It calls
choleskyQR, tsqrDistributed, householderDistributed,
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 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.
A bound that is proved
Every error statement on this site so far is a measurement of one run. Interval arithmetic makes a different kind of claim — the answer lies in this set, for this input, with no probability attached — and its failure mode is that it returns nothing at all. On a Hilbert system it proves a bound 23 times the error it bounds, and one size later it refuses.
Where the flop count stopped predicting the timeA reduction that changes the order
A tall-skinny QR computed as a tree of independent block factorisations touches a 512×12 matrix once instead of twelve times, computes a completely different sequence of roundings from the sweep it replaces, and returns ‖AᵀA − RᵀR‖/‖AᵀA‖ = 1.65·10⁻¹⁵ against the sweep's 9.95·10⁻¹⁵. On the same matrix classical Gram–Schmidt returns 4.6·10⁻¹⁰.
Where the flop count stopped predicting the timeThe message and the word
Three factorisations of one matrix on sixteen processors: 48 communication rounds, 4, and 4. The words sent are 1,170, 1,170 and 2,160 — so the method with the fewest rounds sends the most words, and the count that separates the three is the one no operation count can see.
Least squares, and the road not to takeThe road that squares the problem
The normal equations are the first method every course teaches and the method no library uses. Forming AᵀA squares the condition number, and below ε = √u it does not degrade — it produces a matrix that is exactly singular, from data that was perfectly usable.
Elimination, and the swapThe swap that is not optional
Run elimination without a row interchange on a matrix that needs one and nothing announces a failure. There is no division by zero, no warning, and an answer of the right shape. It is simply wrong, and how wrong depends on a number you did not look at.