## Rusty on Matrix Algebra

Eight years ago, the Florida legislature decided to reduce the number of credit hours it takes a state university student to graduate with an undergrad engineering degree. The number of credit hours were reduced from 136 to 128. One of the courses that got the ax in the Mechanical Engineering Department at USF was a 2-credit hour Linear Algebra course. There are many other universities in the nation that have done the same.

So how do students learn Linear Algebra when the course is one of the requirements for accreditation of engineering programs?

Some universities have bundled Linear Algebra course content into courses such as Quantitative Methods where students are expected, in many cases, to learn linear algebra, a programming language/computational system, and complex analysis. Other curriculums have dispersed the Linear Algebra content into different courses such as the topic of special matrices in Programming, simultaneous linear equations in Statics, and eigenvalues/eigenvectors in Vibrations, etc. Unless quality controls are introduced carefully, the content/depth of Linear Algbera in such courses can vary substantially between courses and instructors. Such control is impossible in metropolitan universities such as USF where a large proportion of students transfer from community colleges.

To have a resource that would be a self-explanatory as well as get the students exposed to Linear Algebra applications motivated me to write a simple Introduction to Matrix Algebra book. The book consists of ten chapters spanning fundamentals of matrix algebra, numerical methods for solving a set of equations, and a treatment of adequacy of solutions and eigenvalues.

Since 2002, the Introduction to Matrix Algebra book has been downloaded free of charge by more than 30,000 users from 50 different countries, and the feedback has been humbling and fulfilling.

Since April 2008, the book has also been made available for a nominal charge via lulu.com as a pdf file as well as a soft cover book. Proceeds from the book are allowing me to expand the book with more examples/problems and additional chapters.

Since my belief continues to embrace open and uncomplicated dissemination, eight individual chapters of the book in pdf form are still available free of charge. So one may ask the following question. Why should I buy the book when it is available free of charge? For answer to this question, click here

For more details about the book, visit the book website at http://autarkaw.com/books/matrixalgebra/index.html

This post brought to you by Holistic Numerical Methods: Numerical Methods for the STEM undergraduate at http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu

## LU Decomposition takes more computational time than Gaussian Elimination! What gives?

If you are solving a set of simultaneous linear equations, LU Decomposition method (involving forward elimination, forward substitution and back substitution) would use more computational time than Gaussian elimination (involving forward elimination and back substitution, but NO forward substitution).

So why use and waste time talking about LU Decomposition?

Because, LU Decomposition is computationally more efficient than Gaussian elimination when we are solving several sets of equations with the same coefficient matrix but different right hand sides. Case in point is when you are finding the inverse of a matrix [A]. If one is trying to find the inverse of nxn matrix, then it implies that one needs to solve n sets of simultaneous linear equations of [A][X]=[C] form with the n right hand sides [C] being the n columns of the nxn identity matrix, while the coefficient matrix [A] stays the same.

The computational time taken for solving a single set of n simultaneous linear equations is as follows:

• Forward elimination: Proportional to $\frac{n^3}{3}$
• Back substitution: Proportional to $\frac{n^2}{2}$
• Forward substitution: Proportional to $\frac{n^2}{2}$
• So for LU decomposition method used to find the inverse of a matrix, the computational time is proportional to $\frac{n^3}{3}+n( \frac{n^2}{2}+\frac{n^2}{2})=\frac{4n^3}{3}$. Remember that the forward elimination only needs to be done only once on [A] to generate the L and U matrices for the LU decomposition method. However the forward and back substitution need to be done n times.

Now for Gaussian Elimination used to find the inverse of a matrix, the computational time is proportional to $n \frac{n^3}{3} +n \frac{n^2}{2}=\frac{n^4}{3}+\frac{n^3}{2}$. Remember that both the forward elimination and back substitution need to be done n times.

Hence for large n, for LU Decomposition, the computational time is proportional to $\frac{4n^3}{3}$, while for Gaussian Elimination, the computational time is proportional to $\frac{n^4}{3}$. So for large n, the ratio of the computational time for Gaussian elimination to computational for LU Decomposition is ${\frac{n^4}{3}}/{\frac{4n^3}{3}}=\frac{n}{4}$.

As an example, to find the inverse of a 2000×2000 coefficient matrix by Gaussian Elimination would take n/4=2000/4=500 times the time it would take to find the inverse by LU Decomposition.

So are you convinced now why we use LU Decomposition in certain cases? For textbook notes on this issue, examples of LU Decomposition to solve a set of equations, and finding inverse of a matrix using LU Decomposition, click here.

Reference: Numerical Methods for the STEM Undergraduate, http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu/topics/lu_decomposition.html

This post brought to you by Holistic Numerical Methods: Numerical Methods for the STEM undergraduate at http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu

## Round off errors and the Patriot missile

Twenty-eight Americans were killed on February 25, 1991 when an Iraqi Scud hit the Army barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The Patriot defense system had failed to track and intercept the Scud. What was the cause for this failure?

The Patriot defense system consists of an electronic detection device called the range gate. It calculates the area in the air space where it should look for the target such as a Scud. To find out where the Patriot missile should be next, it calculates its location based on the velocity of the Scud and the last time the radar detected the Scud.

In the Patriot missile, time was saved in a fixed point register that had a length of 24 bits. Since the internal clock of the system is measured every one-tenth of a second, 1/10 expressed in a 24 bit fixed point register is 0.0001100110011001100110011 (the exact value of the representation 0.0001100110011001100110011 of 1/10 in the 24-fixed point register is 209715/2097152) . As we can see that this is not an exact representation of 1/10. It would take infinite numbers of bits to represent 1/10 exactly. So, the error in the representation is (1/10-209715/2097152) which is approximately 9.5E-8 seconds.

On the day of the mishap, the battery on the Patriot missile was left on for 100 consecutive hours, hence causing an inaccuracy of 9.5E-8x10x60x60x100=0.34 seconds (10 clock cycles in a second, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour).

The shift calculated in the range gate due to the error of 0.342 seconds was calculated as 687m. For the Patriot missile defense system, the target is considered out of range if the shift is more than than 137m. The shift of larger than 137m resulted in the Scud not being targeted and hence killing 28 Americans in the barracks of Saudi Arabia.

When I started looking at the Google search results of the problem, I found some very useful resources that would be of interest to the reader. These go beyond the above given simplistic explanation of the problem and tell the story behind the story. Here they are

1. This reference is the full GAO report of the investigation that resulted after the accident. “Patriot Missile Defense – Software Problem Led to System Failure at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia”, GAO Report, General Accounting Office, Washington DC, February 4, 1992.
2. It should be pointed out that the Patriot missile was originally designed to be a mobile system and not used as a anti-ballistic system. In mobile systems, the clocks are reset more often. As per the article Operations: I Did Not Say You Could Do That! by Bill Barnes and Duke McMillin, here are some important observations: “It turns out that the original use case for this system was to be mobile and to defend against aircraft that move much more slowly than ballistic missiles. Because the system was intended to be mobile, it was expected that the computer would be periodically rebooted. In this way, any clock-drift error would not be propagated over extended periods and would not cause significant errors in range calculation. Because the Patriot system was not intended to run for extended times, it was probably never tested under those conditions—explaining why the problem was not discovered until the war was in progress. The fact that the system was also designed as an antiaircraft system probably also enabled the inclusion of such a design flaw, because slower-moving airplanes would be easier to track and, therefore, less dependent upon a highly accurate clock value.”

A student asked me why we did not use a clock cycle that could be represented exactly in the 24 bit register. Close to 1/10 is a number 0.125 that can be represented exactly as 0.001000000000000000000000 in a 24-bit register, and where 8 clock cycles would be equal to 1 second. I do not have an answer to this question but I intend to find out from my computer science colleagues.

This post brought to you by Holistic Numerical Methods: Numerical Methods for the STEM undergraduate at http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu

## Myth: Error caused by chopping a number is called truncation error

Round off error is the error caused by approximate representation of numbers.

When people talk about round off error, it is the error between the number and its representation. For example 200/3 would be represented as 66.6667 in a six significant digit computer that rounds off the last digit. The last digit has been rounded up from 6 to a 7. The difference between 200/3 and 66.6667, that is, 200/3-66.6667 is the round off error.

If a computer is chopping off as opposed to rounding the last digit, the error caused is still called the round off error (caused by chopping). If a computer is using chopping, then for example, 200/3 would be represented as 66.6666 in a six significant digit computer. The difference between 200/3 and 66.6666, that is, 200/3-66.6666 is the round off error.

Where does the myth come from? Because if one is chopping off the number, students think that we are truncating a number, and hence the resulting error should be truncation error. No! No! That is still round off error. As a side note, there is something called truncating a number – a number if truncated is just the integer part of the number (example: truncating 20.568 gives 20; truncating 20.03 gives 20).

So what then is truncation error?

Truncation error is error caused by truncating a mathematical procedure.

Examples of truncation error abound and include

1. In exact differentiation, you need dx approaching zero; in numerical differentiation we can only choose dx=finite.
2. In exact integration, one would need infinite number of trapezoids to find the integral; in numerical integration, we can only choose a finite number of trapezoids.
3. In the Maclaurin series for transcendental and trigonometric functions, we need infinite number of terms for exact solution; in a numerical solution, we can only choose finite number of terms.

So let us get this straight – round off error is caused by representing numbers approximately; truncation error is caused by approximating mathematical procedures.

For more details, read the textbook chapter on Sources of Error in Numerical Methods at http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu

This post is brought to you by Holistic Numerical Methods: Numerical Methods for the STEM undergraduate at http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu and the textbook on Numerical Methods with Applications available from the lulu storefront.

## Undergraduate Numerical Methods for Engineering

I am starting this blog to help UNDERGRADUATES with their queries on Numerical Methods for Engineers. I have been teaching Numerical Methods for the last 20 years and I get interesting queries and questions while I am teaching, when students come to see me during my office hours, or the email sent at midnight before the assignment is due.

I am keeping a log of what students ask me and will note the answers to their queries here. I am sure that students elsewhere have similar questions when they take a course in Numerical Methods.

The diversity of the course is quite evident –

1. The course is taught to different engineering majors – mechanical, civil, chemical, industrial and electrical.
2. Some teachers emphasize the numerical methods while others spend more time on solving physical problems, and a few may include numerical analysis.
3. The programming tools are diverse including FORTRAN (yes the language is alive and well), Basic, C, Java, or computational packages such as MATLAB, MATHEMATICA, MathCAD, and Maple.

With funding from NSF since 2002, we have developed web-based resources for a course in Numerical Methods. The inclusion of the blog is not part of the funded proposals but we think that this mode of Web 2.0 dissemination is critical in keeping the conversation going on. Although what I am doing here can be offered via a static website, the widgets offered by blogging softwares are indispensable. The widgets I like are categorizing, tagging and RSS Feeds.

We want to reach as many people as possible and build a community which may be temporary to students who are taking a course in Numerical Methods, permanent to instructors and people who use numerical methods in their work. But one thing is certain, temporary or permanent, visitors will leave their imprint on this resource.

This post brought to you by Holistic Numerical Methods: Numerical Methods for the STEM undergraduate at http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu