Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-numerical-linear-algebra-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2025/3/b/iv/solution

Under the permitted singular value bounds, gives
For the symmetric positive-definite matrix in part (iii), its eigenvalues are the squared singular values of , so
Apply the supplied conjugate gradient convergence bound to . For and nonzero , the function increases with , giving
Thus the error in this weighted norm contracts at a guaranteed exponential factor of at most per iteration, up to the prefactor . Here . The Pythagorean identity in part (iii) also identifies with the excess squared linear least-squares problem objective, which consequently decreases by a bound proportional to . For the Euclidean norm, the same eigenvalue bounds give .
For relative accuracy in the -weighted norm, it is sufficient to take
Compute once in operations. Each iteration applies with two dense matrix multiplications and uses further arithmetic operations; when this costs . Hence the total cost is
Using finite termination of the conjugate gradient method in exact arithmetic refines this to . Explicitly constructing first would add setup work and is unnecessary. These accuracy estimates concern relative error; an absolute tolerance replaces by when . If , the initial guess already solves the problem.
As in part 2(b)(v), the Gaussian assumption alone does not make the printed singular value interval a certainty. For example, the event that every entry of has absolute value below a sufficiently small positive number has positive probability and forces , contradicting the asserted lower endpoint. The displayed rate is therefore conditional on the singular-value bounds authorized by the paper. The cost and convergence derivation are exact under that condition; an unconditional probabilistic statement would need an additional failure-probability estimate.

New to topics? Read the docs here!