The exact solution of a random system is longer than the system
At its defaults it draws the exact solution of a random system is longer than the system. Ax = b with A a random integer matrix and b chosen so the answer is a genuine vector of fractions. At n = 11 the question occupies 484 bits — 11² entries of 4 bits each — and the answer occupies 729, a ratio of 1.51. Every entry is a ratio of two determinants by Cramer's rule, checked here by multiplying each one back by det A and comparing it with the determinant of the column-replaced matrix as an integer — so every denominator divides det A and none of them is longer than its 33 bits, while a numerator can be, at 37 here. The answer IS that long, whatever route produced it. That is a floor no exact solver can get under, and it is why the modular route reconstructs the answer rather than eliminating its way to it.
solution-length is one function in lib/figures/integer.js —
exact arithmetic — no residual to print, and a cost measured in the length of the numbers. 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.
Ax = b with A a random integer matrix and b chosen so the answer is a genuine vector of fractions. At n = 11 the question occupies 484 bits — 11² entries of 4 bits each — and the answer occupies 729, a ratio of 1.51. Every entry is a ratio of two determinants by Cramer's rule, checked here by multiplying each one back by det A and comparing it with the determinant of the column-replaced matrix as an integer — so every denominator divides det A and none of them is longer than its 33 bits, while a numerator can be, at 37 here. The answer IS that long, whatever route produced it. That is a floor no exact solver can get under, and it is why the modular route reconstructs the answer rather than eliminating its way to it.
family: "random", upTo: 11
The arguments are the ones A fraction recovered from one remainder passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Ax = b with A a random integer matrix and b chosen so the answer is a genuine vector of fractions. At n = 11 the question occupies 484 bits — 11² entries of 4 bits each — and the answer occupies 729, a ratio of 1.51. Every entry is a ratio of two determinants by Cramer's rule, checked here by multiplying each one back by det A and comparing it with the determinant of the column-replaced matrix as an integer — so every denominator divides det A and none of them is longer than its 33 bits, while a numerator can be, at 37 here. The answer IS that long, whatever route produced it. That is a floor no exact solver can get under, and it is why the modular route reconstructs the answer rather than eliminating its way to it.
family: "hilbert", upTo: 8
The arguments are the ones An exact answer to a measured problem passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Ax = b with A a hilbert integer matrix and b chosen so the answer is a genuine vector of fractions. At n = 8 the question occupies 1216 bits — 8² entries of 19 bits each — and the answer occupies 117, a ratio of 0.0962. Every entry is a ratio of two determinants by Cramer's rule, checked here by multiplying each one back by det A and comparing it with the determinant of the column-replaced matrix as an integer — so every denominator divides det A and none of them is longer than its 40 bits, while a numerator can be, at 16 here. The answer IS that long, whatever route produced it. That is a floor no exact solver can get under, and it is why the modular route reconstructs the answer rather than eliminating its way to it.
family: "wide", upTo: 10
The arguments are the ones The answer is longer than the question passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Ax = b with A a wide integer matrix and b chosen so the answer is a genuine vector of fractions. At n = 10 the question occupies 1000 bits — 10² entries of 10 bits each — and the answer occupies 2058, a ratio of 2.06. Every entry is a ratio of two determinants by Cramer's rule, checked here by multiplying each one back by det A and comparing it with the determinant of the column-replaced matrix as an integer — so every denominator divides det A and none of them is longer than its 103 bits, while a numerator can be, at 105 here. The answer IS that long, whatever route produced it. That is a floor no exact solver can get under, and it is why the modular route reconstructs the answer rather than eliminating its way to it.
family: "hilbert", upTo: 9
The arguments are the ones The answer is longer than the question passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Ax = b with A a hilbert integer matrix and b chosen so the answer is a genuine vector of fractions. At n = 9 the question occupies 1944 bits — 9² entries of 24 bits each — and the answer occupies 193, a ratio of 0.0993. Every entry is a ratio of two determinants by Cramer's rule, checked here by multiplying each one back by det A and comparing it with the determinant of the column-replaced matrix as an integer — so every denominator divides det A and none of them is longer than its 73 bits, while a numerator can be, at 21 here. The answer IS that long, whatever route produced it. That is a floor no exact solver can get under, and it is why the modular route reconstructs the answer rather than eliminating its way to it.
family: "pascal", upTo: 12
The arguments are the ones The answer is longer than the question passes. A value nobody placed would be a picture no essay asked for and no claim was ever checked against.
Ax = b with A a pascal integer matrix and b chosen so the answer is a genuine vector of fractions. At n = 12 the question occupies 2880 bits — 12² entries of 20 bits each — and the answer occupies 100, a ratio of 0.0347. Every entry is a ratio of two determinants by Cramer's rule, checked here by multiplying each one back by det A and comparing it with the determinant of the column-replaced matrix as an integer — so every denominator divides det A and none of them is longer than its 1 bits, while a numerator can be, at 10 here. The answer IS that long, whatever route produced it. That is a floor no exact solver can get under, and it is why the modular route reconstructs the answer rather than eliminating its way to it.
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.
6 distinct claims across 6 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 family the library builds
a range of sizes to solve at
each solution entry is the ratio of two determinants, as Cramer's rule says
enough sizes to draw a trend
every Bareiss division is exact
every denominator of the answer divides det A, so none is longer than it
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.
A fraction recovered from one remainder
A solution over the rationals can be computed modulo a prime power and then recovered — the residue determines the fraction uniquely, but only once the modulus is twice the square of the fraction's longer part. Below that there is no partial credit: the algorithm returns a different fraction with the same residue, and it is a perfectly good one.
Exact arithmetic, and what it costs insteadAn exact answer to a measured problem
The residual is the zero vector, nothing was rounded at any step, and the answer is wrong in its first digit. Data accurate to fourteen places, an exact solve of the system it defines, and an error of 10⁻⁵ — because conditioning was never a statement about arithmetic and removing the arithmetic error removes none of it.
Exact arithmetic, and what it costs insteadThe answer is longer than the question
An exact solution of an integer system is a vector of fractions, each of them a ratio of two determinants. So the output carries 2n long integers where the input carried n² short ones, and no algorithm can write it down more cheaply — the length of the answer is a floor under every exact solver rather than a property of one.