Past exam of the numerical linear algebra course of the University of Oxford / 2025 / 1 / b / ii / Solution

Let $\tilde{A}=\hat{U}\hat{\Sigma }{\hat{V}}^T$. Interpret the diagonal of $\hat{\Sigma }$ as nonnegative computed singular values and sort them consistently. If signed diagonal entries are used instead, take their absolute values and absorb signs into the orthonormal columns. Because the two outer factors have the stated orthonormality, these sorted numbers are exactly ${\sigma }_j(\tilde{A})$.

For completeness, the singular value perturbation bound follows from the Eckart-Young-Mirsky theorem. If $B_{j-1}$ is the truncated singular value decomposition of a matrix $B$, the triangle inequality givesExchange $A$ and $B$ to get $|{\sigma }_j(A)-{\sigma }_j(B)|\le \Vert A-B{\Vert }_2$. Applying this to $B=\tilde{A}$ and the given backward error provesThus backward stability of the singular value decomposition gives an absolute forward error bound for every singular value, even a very small one.