Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 326 1 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For a bounded linear operator between Hilbert spaces, a least-squares solution of data is a minimizer of the residual norm:The minimum-norm least-squares solution is the one of smallest -norm among these minimizers. Equivalently it is the unique least-squares solution in . If the equation is consistent, this is the smallest-norm exact solution.
Let be the orthogonal projection onto . The orthogonal decomposition by a closed subspace givesThe first term has infimum zero by the definition of closure; that infimum is attained exactly if . This proves the least-squares existence criterion:They exist for every datum precisely when the range is closed. Once a solution exists, all solutions differ by elements of the closed null space, and projecting onto its orthogonal complement gives the unique minimum-norm solution.
For a counterexample to existence, take , , and . The range is dense, so the least residual infimum is zero; finite truncations realize residuals tending to zero. But an exact preimage would have every coordinate equal to one and would not belong to . Thus no least-squares minimizer exists for this datum.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 340 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let denote the orthogonal complement of inside . The Meyer-Mallat theorem constructs a wavelet whose integer function translations form an orthonormal basis of . Dilation then gives the orthogonal decomposition into orthogonal complements , so its translates and dilates form an orthonormal wavelet basis.
Using the MRA low-pass filter, choose the high-pass symbol . The quadrature mirror filter identity makes the two analysis channels orthonormal. The resulting Fourier transform formula isEquivalently, with the refinement coefficients from the scaling refinement equation, put and . This index choice gives precisely the displayed high-pass symbol. Changing all by one constant unit phase gives the same orthonormal wavelet construction. In particular the often-used convention differs only by a global minus sign. The basis is for .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 2 5J b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
The orthogonal projections of the Gaussian noise onto the column space of and its orthogonal complement are independent. Consequently and the residual sum of squares are independent, andThus under the alternative,This is the noncentral t-distribution. The rejection region is fixed by the design, and the chosen level, while this probability distribution depends on only through . Therefore the statistical power does not depend on the other regression coefficients, with the design and fixed.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 3 36D iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
Let be the smooth nonzero tangent along a regular null curve, and . Metric compatibility gives . In a two-dimensional Lorentzian manifold, the orthogonal complement of a nonzero null vector is its own span; this follows directly in the preceding null basis. Therefore .
Consequently every regular null curve is a geodesic up to reparametrization. To obtain an affine parameter , write and solve . Then . A solution exists locally and along any nonsingular parameter interval. The original parameter need not be affine; the literal assertion of zero covariant acceleration for every parameter would be false.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 4 16H Solution 2026-10-05
For the Petersen graph, each vertex has three neighbours, adjacent vertices have no common neighbour, and distinct nonadjacent vertices have exactly one common neighbour. The entries of count length-two walks, so diagonal entries are three, adjacent entries zero, and other off-diagonal entries one. HenceThe connected graph has the simple eigenvalue three with eigenvector . On its orthogonal complement , so the remaining eigenvalues satisfy and are one or minus two. If their multiplicities are , then and . Thus
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 4 21F ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
Put . Then and , with the inner product linear in its second argument as required by the later SVD formula. For nonreal , self-adjointness gives . For , positivity gives . These bounds give injectivity and closed range. The range is dense because its orthogonal complement is the kernel of the adjoint, to which the same bound applies. Thus the range is all of and the inverse is bounded in either case. ConsequentlyIf is compact, composition of the compact operator with bounded is compact, so is compact too.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 ia Paper 1 2A i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
The vector triple product identity gives , and henceThus is the identity on the orthogonal complement and multiplies the component parallel to by . It is invertible exactly when , and then
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 ib Paper 4 10E Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
A self-adjoint operator satisfies . If , then , so . An eigenvector exists over ; its orthogonal complement is -invariant. Induction on dimension produces an orthonormal basis of eigenvectors, proving the finite-dimensional spectral theorem.
A self-adjoint is positive definite exactly when every eigenvalue is positive, since in an eigenbasis. The quadratic forms of two positive-definite operators add, so their sum is positive definite.
The same eigenbasis shows that exactly when is positive definite for every and negative definite for every . Finally, if is a unit eigenvector of with eigenvalue , the Rayleigh quotient bounds giveThus every eigenvalue of lies in .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 105 2 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The Lax-Milgram theorem assumes that is a real Hilbert space and is a bounded bilinear form and a coercive bilinear form: there are such thatThen for every continuous linear functional there is a unique satisfyingSymmetry of is not required.
For the proof, the Riesz representation theorem provides a bounded linear operator and with and . Coercivity and the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality implyThus is injective and its range is closed: if converges, the displayed inequality makes a Cauchy sequence; completeness gives and . If lies in the orthogonal complement of the range, then for all . Taking gives , so . A closed subspace with zero orthogonal complement is all of , hence is surjective. The unique solution is , and the same inequality gives the asserted norm bound.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 140 5 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
At a point , write and take the orthogonal complement with respect to the Riemannian metric . The compatible triple identity givesIf is a Lagrangian submanifold, then for , so . Both have dimension , hence equality.
Conversely, if , equality of dimensions gives , and for gives . ThereforeA positive-definite inner product has . Hence , proving that every Lagrangian submanifold is a totally real submanifold for a compatible almost complex structure.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 326 1 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The map is a bounded linear operator, so the inverse image of the closed singleton is closed. That inverse image is also a convex set: if , every convex combination has the same image.
The identity givesConsequently such a exists exactly when is the sum of an element of and one of its orthogonal complement. ThusThese are precisely the least-squares solutions. Indeed, if and , then for every the Pythagorean identity givesConversely, differentiating the squared residual along any real direction forces , hence the normal equation for a linear inverse problem. For any , the difference of two solutions of the normal equation for a linear inverse problem lies in , since . Thereforea closed affine subspace; the empty case is closed and convex as well.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 340 6 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Either essay option suffices; both are developed here to make the two mathematical constructions available.
Diffusion for images. Model grey level as , initially , and use a Neumann boundary condition to avoid flux across an image boundary. The linear heat equation smooths the data. On its solution is convolution with the heat kernel, . Equivalently each Fourier mode is multiplied by , suppressing high frequencies and noise. With no flux, the mean is conserved andThe drawback is that sharp edges also contain high frequencies: a step becomes a transition of width comparable to . Running the heat equation backwards attempts sharpening but amplifies modes by and is ill-posed.
The Perona-Malik equation instead uses a decreasing diffusivity,Small gradients are smoothed strongly and large ones less strongly. If and is a unit tangent to a level curve, then away from zero gradient,The derivative of the flux, rather than just , controls forward parabolicity. Here becomes negative for : smoothing remains tangential but the normal direction can sharpen. This formal edge enhancement comes with forward-backward ill-posedness, so existence and stability of the unregularized continuum equation must not be presumed. One regularization uses as a smoothed edge detector while keeping the flux proportional to . For fixed positive , the coefficient is controlled by the smoothed data; under suitable bounds it stays positive and gives a regularized forward equation. It preserves edges through reduced cross-edge transport, without the same local backward-diffusion calculation.
Diffusion from a gradient energy connects these equations with variational regularization. If , its formal gradient flow is . Linear diffusion corresponds to . The displayed Perona-Malik equation corresponds to , which is nonconvex in the gradient for large . A convex alternative is total variation flow, with , interpreted through a subgradient at zero gradient. Adding squared data fidelity gives the formal evolution , whose equilibrium is the unique total variation denoising minimizer. Convex TV preserves sharp interfaces more effectively than the heat energy, but it may produce piecewise constant plateaux, known as staircasing in total variation denoising. A stopping time or fidelity weight controls the smoothing scale. Linear diffusion is stable but blurs edges; nonlinear diffusion must balance edge selectivity with parabolicity and regularization.
Wavelets on an interval. Simply restricting a whole-line orthonormal wavelet to destroys its orthogonality and generally its vanishing moments. Periodizing the basis restores orthogonality on the circle, but treats the two endpoints as neighbors. This is suitable for periodic data and can create an artificial endpoint jump for nonperiodic data.
A localized interval-adapted wavelet basis instead uses unchanged interior functions and finitely many special boundary wavelets at each endpoint. Start with a sufficiently regular compact support orthonormal Daubechies wavelet of order at least and choose a coarse level at which left and right boundary supports are disjoint. At each boundary, take appropriate finite combinations of the scaling functions that meet the endpoint, restricted to the interval. Choose these combinations to reproduce polynomials of degrees , remove dependencies, and orthonormalize the finite boundary Gram matrix. The choices must be compatible with refinement so that the resulting finite-dimensional spaces are nested; independent arbitrary orthonormalizations would not ensure this. Interior functions retain their whole-line filters, while the boundary functions use finite boundary refinement matrices.
For each level, choose an orthonormal basis of the orthogonal complement . It consists of interior wavelets and a bounded number of left and right boundary wavelets. Since the polynomial restrictions of degree less than belong to , every member of has vanishing moments. The compatible local boundary construction retains support diameter and the regularity of the interior construction. Boundary modification affects only finitely many functions at each level, so increasing resolution still makes the union dense in . Consequently, for a fixed coarse level ,The coarse scaling functions together with all these wavelets form an orthonormal basis. This construction is the Cohen-Daubechies-Vial interval wavelet construction. It preserves localization, polynomial cancellation and stable coefficient extraction without imposing periodic or zero boundary data. The finite boundary refinement matrices also permit a fast transform; a mere restriction followed by one unrelated Gram-Schmidt process at each scale does not establish all these properties.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ib Paper 4 1F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
An eigenvalue of a matrix is a scalar for which for some nonzero eigenvector . Its corresponding eigenspace is
Write . The displayed matrix is the outer product , soIts column space is contained in and is nonzero because . Hence is a rank-one matrix.
The vector is an eigenvector with eigenvalue , and every vector in the orthogonal complement has eigenvalue . ThusSince is a direct sum of these eigenspaces, has an eigenbasis and is therefore a diagonalizable.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 324 4 a i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The usual sufficient input promises for the HHL algorithm are efficient quantum state preparation of the nonzero vector , efficient access to a sparse matrix with at most nonzero entries per row, and a condition number after an efficiently known normalization. Both the positions and values of the nonzero matrix elements must be computable coherently in polynomial time. More generally, efficient Hamiltonian simulation can replace the sparsity promise. We assume is invertible; if zero eigenvalues occur, one must instead restrict to their orthogonal complement and specify the desired inverse on that support.
With and a known bound , choose . The HHL controlled reciprocal rotation then succeeds with probabilityThis is the required inverse-polynomial lower bound. In the usual approximate algorithm, inverse-polynomial requested error also gives polynomial runtime under these input promises. The original HHL paper states the dependence on sparsity, conditioning, and accuracy.
There is a qualification for a literally exact version. Representability of the eigenvalues in bits does not itself make exact quantum phase estimation efficient: using requires controlled powers corresponding to evolution times as large as . Under the paper's idealization we may describe their exact action, but polynomial runtime for that exact circuit additionally requires efficient implementations of those controlled powers, or equivalent efficient exact spectral access. Assuming an operation executes exactly does not bound its cost. This distinction is recorded in cost of exact phase estimation on a dyadic spectrum.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 341 7 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Consider a bounded Lipschitz domain and homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions forAssume is a bounded real symmetric matrix field with uniformly, is bounded, and defines a bounded linear functional on , the zero-boundary Sobolev space. The weak formulation isThe Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives continuity . Uniform ellipticity and the Poincaré inequality give a coercive bilinear form, . The Lax-Milgram theorem therefore supplies a unique weak solution, with . Its proof represents by a bounded linear operator using the Riesz representation theorem; coercivity gives an injective operator with closed image, and a zero orthogonal complement makes that image all of . This yields existence, uniqueness and the displayed estimate.
For a conforming finite element space , the Galerkin method finds such that for every . With a basis , this is the linear system , where the stiffness matrix is and . Its positive-definite matrix property proves unique discrete solvability. Local support gives a sparse matrix through elementwise assembly.
For the symmetric problem, the Ritz method minimizes over . Differentiating in every direction gives precisely the Galerkin method equations. Conversely, if solves them, , proving it is the unique minimum. The same argument over gives , where is the energy norm. Thus the Ritz method chooses the best trial function in that norm.
Subtracting the continuous and discrete equations gives Galerkin orthogonality, . For arbitrary and , it follows that . Coercivity and continuity prove the Céa lemma:In the symmetric energy norm, the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality improves the constant to one. Equivalently, Galerkin orthogonality gives the Pythagorean identity . These estimates establish stability and show that approximation properties of the trial space determine convergence.
For continuous piecewise-linear elements on a shape-regular mesh in dimensions at most three, a finite element interpolation estimate gives when . Combining it with the Céa lemma yields energy norm error. More generally, degree- elements give error in under the corresponding regularity and approximation assumptions. Mere mesh refinement cannot supply an order whose required solution regularity is absent.
An additional order in the L2 norm follows under a dual elliptic regularity assumption. Solve and assume . The Aubin–Nitsche duality argument uses Galerkin orthogonality to obtainTherefore , giving for the piecewise-linear case with . This improvement explicitly requires regularity of the dual problem.
As a concrete example, solve on with zero endpoint values. On a uniform mesh of spacing , the piecewise-linear hat functions give , and . The discrete equations are , whose solution is . The exact solution is , so is its piecewise-linear nodal interpolant. On each interval ,Integrating the squared error and squared derivative error gives the explicit rateswhere the norm here is .
For nonsymmetric coercive problems, the Galerkin method, Galerkin orthogonality and the Céa lemma still apply, but the symmetric quadratic minimization interpretation of the Ritz method generally does not. Nonconforming trial spaces, inexact integration and noncoercive equations need additional arguments beyond the conforming coercive theory proved here.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 350 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Use the shape-rate convention for the Gamma distribution. DefineThe zero null space assumption makes a positive-definite matrix, and is the unique ordinary least squares solution. The Gaussian likelihood contributes , which must be retained because is unknown. Multiplying it by the improper prior and the Gamma distribution gives the normal-gamma posterior with a flat prior:Here the constant density of the improper prior cancels on normalization. PutThe normal equation makes the residual orthogonal to the range of . The orthogonal decomposition by a closed subspace into that range and its orthogonal complement givesIntegration over by the Gaussian integral, followed by integration over using the Gamma distribution, yieldsThus the posterior distribution is proper, despite the improper prior; here follows from the zero null space assumption.
Completing the square in and collecting the powers of give the two conditional distributions:Explicitly their probability density functions areFor a joint maximum a posteriori estimate relative to , first fix . The unique maximizing is . The remaining log density is plus a constant. Consequently, if ,The stated assumptions do not always imply . If , the supremum occurs as but is not attained on ; if , the density is unbounded there. In either case there is no joint maximum a posteriori estimate in the stated parameter space. Calling zero a boundary mode does not make it an admissible positive precision.
If “MAP estimators” instead means separate modes of the marginal distributions, integration givesThus the marginal maximum a posteriori estimate of is always , and that of is when , with the same nonattainment at zero when . Joint and marginal maximization are different operations; the usual joint interpretation gives the preceding boxed pair.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 1 40C b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Here , so the Jacobi iteration matrix isThe all-ones vector is an eigenvector with eigenvalue . On its two-dimensional orthogonal complement, the coordinates sum to zero and , so the other eigenvalue is with multiplicity two. ThereforeBy Jacobi convergence for a three-by-three equicorrelation matrix, convergence occurs exactly forAt either endpoint the spectral radius is one, so convergence for arbitrary initial data fails.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 3 21I d Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
Write . We first prove that is dense. Otherwise some nonzero lies in its orthogonal complement, soBy part (b), choose finite-dimensional spaces containing such that in operator norm. Sincethe operator is not injective. Therefore is not surjective; the contrapositive of part (c) makes an eigenvalue of . Choose unit vectors with . ThenCompactness gives a subsequence for which converges. Since , the displayed relation makes converge to a unit vector , and continuity gives , contradicting the hypothesis. Thus is dense.
Next suppose were not bounded below, or equivalently that its lower norm were zero. There would be unit vectors with , henceAgain a convergent subsequence of forces the corresponding to converge to a unit vector satisfying , another contradiction. Therefore some satisfies
This lower bound makes closed: if converges, then is Cauchy and its limit maps to the same limit. Since the image is both dense and closed, it is all of . We have proved the Fredholm alternative for a compact operator: every nonzero spectral value of a compact operator is an eigenvalue.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2002 Paper 1 1 a Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Write . Since is a unit vector, the equation becomes . Thus ranges over the two-dimensional orthogonal complement of : the locus is an affine hyperplane through , with unit normal . Conversely, every such vector satisfies the equation. Its perpendicular distance from the origin is ; is the signed distance in the chosen normal direction.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2003 Paper 2 8 a ii Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Write with . The orthonormality conditions and giveConsequently . It is the orthogonal projection matrix onto the orthogonal complement of the linear span of .