Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2023 / iii / Paper 225 / 4 / b

Let ${\Xi }_{ik}=⟨X_i,B_k⟩$ and define the roughness penalty matrixFor $c=(c_1,\dots ,c_K{)}^{\mathsf{T}}$, the loss is the quadratic functionIts normal equations areWhenever ${\Xi }^{\mathsf{T}}\Xi +\rho \Omega$ is positive definite, the unique minimizer isFor the usual choice $\rho \ge 0$, the penalty matrix is positive semidefinite, so full column rank of $\Xi$ suffices. Since the question permits arbitrary real $\rho$, a sufficiently negative value can make the quadratic form indefinite; then the loss is unbounded below and no minimizer exists. In the singular positive-semidefinite case, the Moore-Penrose inverse describes the minimum-norm solution whenever the normal equations are consistent.