Ladder
Multilinear rank — the ladder
2 distinct arguments against one idea, from the one that introduces it to the one that assumes the rest.
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A decomposition made only of SVDs
Everything the definition of tensor rank loses comes back if the SVD's algorithm is carried across instead of its definition — take the leading left singular subspace of every unfolding and project onto all of them. It exists, it costs d matrix decompositions, and its error is within √d of the best there is.
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The orthogonality that cannot be diagonal
A matrix decomposition hands over orthonormal factors and a diagonal middle at once. For three indices the two come apart, and there is no arrangement that has both — so the question stops being which decomposition to use and becomes which of the two properties the computation needs.