Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 iii Paper 225 4 b Solution 2026-09-28
Let and define the roughness penalty matrixFor , the loss is the quadratic functionIts normal equations areWhenever is positive definite, the unique minimizer isFor the usual choice , the penalty matrix is positive semidefinite, so full column rank of suffices. Since the question permits arbitrary real , 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.