Block coordinate gradient 2026-10-25
The orthogonal projection of the gradient onto the coordinate subspace indexed by . It is kept as a vector in the original Euclidean space, with zero coordinates outside the block. For a singleton block it is ; for the full block it is .
Target: gradient-descent.bigb, under Lipschitz gradient.
For a continuously differentiable convex function on with coordinate Lipschitz continuity constants , its block coordinate gradient is Lipschitz continuous along each corresponding coordinate subspace, with constant at most .
To prove this without assuming a Hessian matrix, put . Sum the coordinate derivative bound by Bregman divergence over the block, then repeat with interchanged and average:
If is supported in the block, the dot product uses only . The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and cancellation of its Euclidean norm give the result, including the zero case separately. Taking the full block supplies a global Lipschitz gradient constant .
Target: convex-optimization.bigb, under Coordinate descent.
Write
on , where is the dual space. The dual pairing is linear separately in the vector and the linear functional. For example, for real numbers ,
Thus is a bilinear form. It is also an alternating bilinear form, since
To prove that this is a nondegenerate bilinear form, suppose pairs to zero with every . Setting gives for every , hence . Setting gives for every . If , basis extension supplies a coordinate functional with , a contradiction. Thus . The left radical is zero, and the displayed change of sign implies the right radical is zero as well. Hence is a nondegenerate bilinear form, making a symplectic vector space.
For the required example take the coordinate subspace
Using the definition of the bilinear orthogonal complement in part (b),
Therefore
This is a Lagrangian subspace. Its dimension is , exactly half of , so part (b)(i) is satisfied.
There is no contradiction with part (b)(ii): that part asks whether a direct sum is guaranteed, and the answer is already no. Moreover, when , the present alternating bilinear form is not a symmetric bilinear form. Choose and with ; then
It therefore does not satisfy the symmetry hypothesis of part (b)(ii). If , then , and both and hold trivially.