tree-stretch
At its defaults it draws κ is between 1 and the total stretch, and the bound is 2.28–3.47× loose. Three spanning trees of the grid 5×5 used as preconditioners. For each, the bar spans the smallest and largest eigenvalue of L_T⁻¹L_G on the subspace orthogonal to the constant vector, and the tick is the total stretch — the sum over the graph's edges of the resistance of the path the tree makes them take, which is an integer for an unweighted graph and contains no arithmetic at all. The smallest eigenvalue is 1 to 2·10⁻¹⁵ on every tree, which is a theorem rather than a measurement: a tree is a subgraph, so its quadratic form is never the larger. The largest is below the stretch on every tree, by between 2.28 and 3.47. Choosing a preconditioner is therefore choosing a tree, and it can be scored without factorising anything.
tree-stretch is one function in lib/figures/graphres.js —
resistance, sparsification and elimination — three routes to one number, and a count that outgrows the format. 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.
Three spanning trees of the grid 5×5 used as preconditioners. For each, the bar spans the smallest and largest eigenvalue of L_T⁻¹L_G on the subspace orthogonal to the constant vector, and the tick is the total stretch — the sum over the graph's edges of the resistance of the path the tree makes them take, which is an integer for an unweighted graph and contains no arithmetic at all. The smallest eigenvalue is 1 to 2·10⁻¹⁵ on every tree, which is a theorem rather than a measurement: a tree is a subgraph, so its quadratic form is never the larger. The largest is below the stretch on every tree, by between 2.28 and 3.47. Choosing a preconditioner is therefore choosing a tree, and it can be scored without factorising anything.
family: "grid", n: 25
The arguments are the ones A count that comes out of a determinant 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.
Three spanning trees of the grid 5×5 used as preconditioners. For each, the bar spans the smallest and largest eigenvalue of L_T⁻¹L_G on the subspace orthogonal to the constant vector, and the tick is the total stretch — the sum over the graph's edges of the resistance of the path the tree makes them take, which is an integer for an unweighted graph and contains no arithmetic at all. The smallest eigenvalue is 1 to 2·10⁻¹⁵ on every tree, which is a theorem rather than a measurement: a tree is a subgraph, so its quadratic form is never the larger. The largest is below the stretch on every tree, by between 2.28 and 3.47. Choosing a preconditioner is therefore choosing a tree, and it can be scored without factorising anything.
family: "cycle", n: 25
The arguments are the ones A preconditioner that is a tree 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.
Three spanning trees of the cycle 25 used as preconditioners. For each, the bar spans the smallest and largest eigenvalue of L_T⁻¹L_G on the subspace orthogonal to the constant vector, and the tick is the total stretch — the sum over the graph's edges of the resistance of the path the tree makes them take, which is an integer for an unweighted graph and contains no arithmetic at all. The smallest eigenvalue is 1 to 1.11·10⁻¹⁵ on every tree, which is a theorem rather than a measurement: a tree is a subgraph, so its quadratic form is never the larger. The largest is below the stretch on every tree, by between 1.92 and 1.92. Choosing a preconditioner is therefore choosing a tree, and it can be scored without factorising anything.
family: "grid", n: 36
The arguments are the ones A preconditioner that is a tree 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.
Three spanning trees of the grid 6×6 used as preconditioners. For each, the bar spans the smallest and largest eigenvalue of L_T⁻¹L_G on the subspace orthogonal to the constant vector, and the tick is the total stretch — the sum over the graph's edges of the resistance of the path the tree makes them take, which is an integer for an unweighted graph and contains no arithmetic at all. The smallest eigenvalue is 1 to 6.66·10⁻¹⁶ on every tree, which is a theorem rather than a measurement: a tree is a subgraph, so its quadratic form is never the larger. The largest is below the stretch on every tree, by between 2.44 and 4.08. Choosing a preconditioner is therefore choosing a tree, and it can be scored without factorising anything.
family: "grid", n: 49
The arguments are the ones A preconditioner that is a tree 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.
Three spanning trees of the grid 7×7 used as preconditioners. For each, the bar spans the smallest and largest eigenvalue of L_T⁻¹L_G on the subspace orthogonal to the constant vector, and the tick is the total stretch — the sum over the graph's edges of the resistance of the path the tree makes them take, which is an integer for an unweighted graph and contains no arithmetic at all. The smallest eigenvalue is 1 to 3.11·10⁻¹⁵ on every tree, which is a theorem rather than a measurement: a tree is a subgraph, so its quadratic form is never the larger. The largest is below the stretch on every tree, by between 4.12 and 4.69. Choosing a preconditioner is therefore choosing a tree, and it can be scored without factorising anything.
family: "skewed", n: 36
The arguments are the ones A preconditioner that is a tree 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.
Three spanning trees of the preferential 36 used as preconditioners. For each, the bar spans the smallest and largest eigenvalue of L_T⁻¹L_G on the subspace orthogonal to the constant vector, and the tick is the total stretch — the sum over the graph's edges of the resistance of the path the tree makes them take, which is an integer for an unweighted graph and contains no arithmetic at all. The smallest eigenvalue is 1 to 6.22·10⁻¹⁵ on every tree, which is a theorem rather than a measurement: a tree is a subgraph, so its quadratic form is never the larger. The largest is below the stretch on every tree, by between 2.71 and 5.08. Choosing a preconditioner is therefore choosing a tree, and it can be scored without factorising anything.
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.
17 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 connected graph, which is what a spanning tree needs
a connected spanning tree
a family the library builds
a graph the generalised eigenproblem can afford
a graph with at least two vertices
a positive weight
a spanning tree
a spanning tree whose grounded Laplacian is positive definite
and none exceeds the total stretch
every endpoint inside the vertex set
every preconditioned eigenvalue is at least one (breadth-first)
every preconditioned eigenvalue is at least one (random, second)
every preconditioned eigenvalue is at least one (random)
Jacobi needs a symmetric matrix
matmul shapes agree
no edge given twice
no self-loop
Against the rule
It calls a factoriser without drawing a factorisation
(treeSpectrum, stretch),
so the rule is written down as not applying, with the reason:
the bar is the preconditioned spectrum's own two ends and the tick is the total stretch, which is a combinatorial integer with no arithmetic in it; every quantity a badge could carry is already an endpoint of the bar
The exemption list is the interesting half of the rule rather than an escape hatch — it is
where a decision about a figure had to be argued in one line. residualcheck
refuses an exemption that is not doing work, and rejected ten of the fifteen written for the
expansion's figures on exactly that ground: a figure whose vertical axis is a residual
satisfies the rule by construction, and touching a factoriser does not by itself require an
entry.
Across the library: the rule bites on 214
of 382 generators —
194 print a residual and
20 are exempt with a published reason;
168 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 count that comes out of a determinant
The number of spanning trees of a graph is the determinant of its grounded Laplacian, so it is a whole number known in advance. The elimination that computes it is backward stable at every size — and from sixteen vertices the answer is wrong, because the count has seventeen digits and a binary64 has sixteen.
The matrix that is a graphA distance computed by a solve
Effective resistance is the one quantity in this field with no combinatorial route to it — it is defined by a linear system. On a small unweighted graph the answer is a ratio of two integers, so for once the error is known rather than estimated, and every resistance in a graph has to add up to a number fixed in advance.
The matrix that is a graphA graph with a tenth of the edges
Keeping 344 of 1,225 edges, sampled by effective resistance and reweighted, preserves every eigenvalue of the Laplacian to within a factor of 1.7. It preserves no degree — half of them are wrong by more than a third — and it takes the diameter from one to three.
The matrix that is a graphA preconditioner that is a tree
Every eigenvalue of a tree-preconditioned Laplacian is at least one and at most the total stretch — a combinatorial integer with no arithmetic in it. Measured, the bound is two to four times loose, and on a grid the preconditioner makes the conditioning worse by a factor of 1.85 at every size.
The matrix that is a graphEliminating a vertex is a graph operation
Gaussian elimination on a Laplacian deletes a vertex and joins its neighbours into a clique with conductances wᵢwⱼ over Σw. The matrix that remains is still a graph — symmetric, zero row sums, nonpositive off the diagonal — and the ordering decides whether the fill is thirty-one edges or four hundred and sixty-five.