Past exam of the numerical linear algebra course of the University of Oxford / 2025 / 3 / a

Write $x=Q_{k}y$ and $\beta =\Vert b{\Vert }_2$. The Arnoldi decomposition and $b=\beta Q_{k+1}{e}_1$ giveBecause $Q_{k+1}$ has orthonormal columns, it preserves the Euclidean norm. The generalized minimal residual method therefore reduces to the small linear least-squares problemUse Givens rotations on the upper Hessenberg matrix to obtain a QR decompositionwhere $Z$ is an orthogonal matrix and $R_k$ is an upper triangular matrix. Then solve $R_k{y}_k=g_{1:k}$ by backward substitution in a triangular system and form $Q_k{y}_k$. The resulting minimum linear-system residual has Euclidean norm $|g_{k+1}|$.

The small problem has a unique answer: if ${\tilde{H}}_{k}y=0$, the Arnoldi decomposition gives $A{Q}_{k}y=0$. The invertible matrix $A$ implies $Q_{k}y=0$, and the orthonormality of $Q_k$ then gives $y=0$. Thus ${\tilde{H}}_k$ has full column rank and $R_k$ is nonsingular.

For the small QR decomposition, each of the $k$ Givens rotations eliminates one subdiagonal entry of the upper Hessenberg matrix. At column $j$, apply the rotation to two rows in columns $j,\dots ,k$, costing $O(k-j+1)$ arithmetic operations. Summing gives $O(k^2)$, and applying the rotations to the right-hand side costs $O(k)$. Backward substitution in a triangular system costs $O(k^2)$.

Computing $\Vert b{\Vert }_2$ costs $O(n)$ and the final dense matrix multiplication $Q_k{y}_k$ costs $O(nk)$. Thus the total, with the Arnoldi decomposition already supplied, isHere $1\le k<n$, since $Q_{k+1}$ has orthonormal columns in ${\mathbb{R}}^n$. In the standard dense arithmetic model, forming the general matrix–vector product gives the sharp $\Theta (nk)$ cost. The pair above records that two-parameter bound; looser bounds such as $O(n^2)$ are also possible because $k<n$. Treating ${\tilde{H}}_k$ as an unstructured dense matrix would unnecessarily replace its $O(k^2)$ factorization by an $O(k^3)$ computation.

The claim is true, withIt is a symmetric positive-definite matrix: for every nonzero vector $z$, the fact that $A$ is an invertible matrix gives $z^{T}Mz=\Vert Az{\Vert }_2^2>0$. Since $A{x}_{\ast }=b$, every candidate $x$ satisfiesThe generalized minimal residual method therefore minimizes precisely this weighted norm of the error over the linear span of $Q_k$. The same matrix $M$ works for every $k$ and does not depend on $b$.