Understanding Matlab linsolve - matlab

1.What is the difference between A\b and linsolve(A,b) (different algorithms?) ?
2.What is the difference solving A*x=b and A'*A*x=A'*b, which is more precise ?
Second equation goes from Least squares approximation
Simple matlab test code:
A=[1,2,3;4,5,6;7,8,9]
b=[1;2;3]
x1= A\b
x1 =
-0.3333
0.6667
0
x2=linsolve(A,b)
x2 =
-0.3333
0.6667
0
x3=linsolve(A'*A,A'*b)
x3 =
0.2487
-0.4974
0.5820
x4=(A'*A)\(A'*b)
x4 =
-0.8182
1.6364
-0.4848
reading linsolve documentation I found that
[X,R] = linsolve(A,B) solves the matrix equation AX = B and returns
the reciprocal of the condition number of A if A is a square matrix,
and the rank of A otherwise.
so using R we can test precision(2nd question)?

Regarding your first question: one can consider mldivde (x = A\B) as a wrapper of the linsolve function. The function linsolve allows the user to specify information about the matrix A which can help Matlab to select a more appropriate (faster) algorithm to solve the system. Nevertheless, by using linsolve it is easy to screw up. Quoting from Matlab's documentation:
If A does not have the properties that you specify in opts, linsolve returns incorrect results and does not return an error message. If you are not sure whether A has the specified properties, use mldivide instead.
If you can assess with 100% of certainty the type of your matrix A while executing your algorithm, then go for linsolve. Otherwise use mldivide.

Related

How to generate a matrix automatically with given n in matlab

For the linear regression, I want to generate the matrix for polynomials of n degree.
if n is 1
X=[x(:), ones(length(x),1)]
if n is 2
X=[x(:).^2 x(:) ones(length(x),1)]
...
if n is 5
X=[x(:).^5 x(:).^4 x(:).^3 x(:).^2 x(:) ones(length(x),1)]
I do not know how to code with matlab if I set n=6 and it will automatically generate the wanted X matrix. Hope you can help me.
This can be easily done with bsxfun:
X = bsxfun(#power, x(:), n:-1:0);
Or, in Matlab versions from R1016b onwards, you can use implicit expansion:
X = x(:).^(n:-1:0);
Check out the polyval function. I believe that will do what you’re looking for.
To get increasing the polynomial to increase in degree, you can increase the length of your p argument using a loop.
If you write edit polyfit you can see how MATLAB have implemented the polyfit command, which is similar to what you are trying to do. In there you will find the code
% Construct the Vandermonde matrix V = [x.^n ... x.^2 x ones(size(x))]
V(:,n+1) = ones(length(x),1,class(x));
for j = n:-1:1
V(:,j) = x.*V(:,j+1);
end
Which constructs the matrix you are interested in. The benefit of this method over the bsxfun is that you only calculate x(:).^n and then saves the intermediary results. Instead of treating all powers as seperate problems, e.g. x(:)^(n-1) as a seperate problem to x(:).^n.

Find roots of characteristic equation of a matrix function in MATLAB

I have a matrix that is a function of some parameter A=A(x). I would like to find the points x where this matrix becomes singular. Example (I have a large matrix though):
syms x
A=[x sin(x); cos(x^2) 2.5];
So far I have been symbolically computing the determinant of the matrix and then used fzero or newtzero to find the roots of that characteristic equation. I.e.
detA = det(A);
fzero(matlabFunction(detA),startingGuess)
Then I found this: How to find out if a matrix is singular?, where it is advocated to not use the determinant under any circumstances.
Indeed the symbolic determinant calculation is terribly slow. However I tried to use rank(A) instead as suggested in the link and it does not seem to work for symbolic matrices.
Is there any way to implement the suggestions in the link for finding the roots of a characteristic equation of a matrix that is given symbolically?
A possible approach would be the following: a square matrix A is singular if and only if the homogeneous linear (with respect to the vector y) system A*y = 0 has nontrivial solutions y <> 0 (which is equivalent to det(A) = 0 and rank(A) = 0 among others. So a more or less standard, as I recall from the past, technique to compute such points x is to solve the nonlinear system
A(x)*y = 0 (1)
||y|| = 1 (2)
This way you can compute a point x* and a vector y* such that A(x*) is singular and y* is an eigenvector corresponding to the zero eigenvalue of A(x*).
If I remember correctly, you can also solve the somewhat easier system
A(x)*y = 0 (1)
<y,c> = 1 (2a)
where c is "almost" any nonzero random vector (normalize it to 1 to avoid numerical problems).
As a matter of fact there is an enormous bibliography on the subject - you can look for saddle-node bifurcation computations (in case A(x) is the Jacobian of a vector field), or for "distance to instability".
From a discussion with Ander Biguri it seems that the determinant is actually a perfectly fine method of approaching this problem. The problem seems to be to solve the final equation in a stable manner, which would be a different question.

Matlab Matrix Minimization

I have the following matrix
R=(A-C)*inv(A+B-C-C')*(A-C');
where A and B are n by n matrices. I want to find n*n matrix C such that the determinant of R is minimized, SO:
C=arg min (det(R));
Is there any function in MATLAB that can handle this problem?
It seems like you are trying to find the minimum of an unconstrained multivariable function. This can probably be achieved with fminunc
fun = #(x)x(1)*exp(-(x(1)^2 + x(2)^2)) + (x(1)^2 + x(2)^2)/20;
x0 = [1,2];
[x,fval] = fminunc(fun,x0)
Note that there are no examples in the documentation where a matrix is used, this is probably because horrendous performance could be expected when trying to solve this problem for a matrix of any nontiny size. (This is not because of matlab, but because of the nature of the problem).
It is also good to realize that this method does not (cannot) guarantee an optimum, only a local optimum.

For what value of k are these 3 vectors linearly dependent

So I have these three vectors:
And I have to find out for what value of k these three vectors are linearly dependent. I have tried using rref and linsolve with syms for this but that did not work out. I'm relatively new to MatLab and matrices so please keep that in mind.
I know in order to check if vectors are linearly dependent that c1...cn have to be non-zero.
I also want to know how you can use variables in general when solving these types of equations in MatLab.
A set of vectors (at least if you have n vectors in n dimensions) is linearly dependent if the matrix constructed from them is singular, i.e. if its determinant is 0. If you have the Symbolic Math Toolbox, you can construct a symbolic matrix:
syms k;
M = [1 k 0; -1 1 2; 0 0 3];
det(M)
This will tell you that det(M)==3*k+3, which you can solve by hand. But generally, you can ask matlab to solve it:
solve(det(M)==0,k);
which will tell you the answer is -1. So unless k==-1, these vectors are linearly independent (i.e. they comprise a basis of the Euclidean space R^3).
Update: If you don't have the Symbolic Math Toolbox, you could still try to find a numerical solution. First define a function
detfun=#(k) det([1 k 0; -1 1 2; 0 0 3]);
that for any value of k will give you the determinant of your matrix, for instance detfun(3) gives 12. Then you can use fsolve to find a numerical solution to the equation detfun(k)==0, by calling
fsolve(detfun,0)
in which the second argument, 0, refers to the starting point of the search performed by fsolve. This will tell you that the answer is k==-1, but a single call to fsolve will only give you a single solution. If your function has multiple roots, you have to play around with the starting points to find more of them. In this case, you can know that your function (i.e. det(M(k)) is linear in k, so it has a unique root.

Matlab equivalent to Mathematica's FindInstance

I do just about everything in Matlab but I have yet to work out a good way to replicate Mathematica's FindInstance function in Matlab. As an example, with Mathematica, I can enter:
FindInstance[x + y == 1 && x > 0 && y > 0, {x, y}]
And it will give me:
{{x -> 1/2, y -> 1/2}}
When no solution exists, it will give me an empty Out. I use this often in my work to check whether or not a solution to a system of inequalities exists -- I don't really care about a particular solution.
It seems like there should be a way to replicate this in Matlab with Solve. There are sections in the help file on solving a set of inequalities for a parametrized solution with conditions. There's another section on spitting out just one solution using PrincipalValue, but this seems to just select from a finite solution set, rather than coming up with one that meets the parameters.
Can anybody come up with a way to replicate the FindInstance functionality in Matlab?
Building on what jlandercy said, you can certainly use MATLAB's linprog function, which is MATLAB's linear programming solver. A linear program in the MATLAB universe can be formulated like so:
You seek to find a solution x in R^n which minimizes the objective function f^{T}*x subject to a set of inequality constraints, equality constraints, and each component in x is bounded between a lower and upper bound. Because you want to find the minimum possible value that satisfies the above constraint given, what you're really after is:
Because MATLAB only supports inequalities of less than, you'll need to take the negative of the first two constraints. In addition, MATLAB doesn't support strict inequalities, and so what you'll have to do is enforce a constraint so that you are checking to see if each variable is lesser than a small number, perhaps something like setting a threshold epsilon to 1e-4. Therefore, with the above, your formulation is now:
Note that we don't have any upper or lower bounds as those conditions are already satisfied in the equality and inequality constraints. All you have to do now is plug this problem into linprog. linprog accepts syntax in the following way:
x = linprog(f,A,b,Aeq,beq);
f is a vector of coefficients that work with the objective function, A is a matrix of coefficients that work with the inequality, b is a vector of coefficients that are for the right-hand side of each inequality constraint, and Aeq,beq, are the same as the inequality but for the equality constraints. x would be the solution to the linear programming problem formulated. If we reformulate your problem into matrix form for the above, we now get:
With respect to the linear programming formulation, we can now see what each variable in the MATLAB universe needs to be. Therefore, in MATLAB syntax, each variable becomes:
f = [1; 1];
A = [-1 0; 0 -1];
b = [1e-4; 1e-4];
Aeq = [1 1];
beq = 1;
As such:
x = linprog(f, A, b, Aeq, beq);
We get:
Optimization terminated.
x =
0.5000
0.5000
If linear programming is not what you're looking for, consider looking at MATLAB's MuPAD interface: http://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/mupad_ug/solve-algebraic-equations-and-inequalities.html - This more or less mimics what you see in Mathematica if you're more comfortable with that.
Good luck!
Matlab is not a symbolic solver as Mathematica is, so you will not get exact solutions but numeric approximations. Anyway if you are about to solve linear programming (simplex) such as in your example, you should use linprog function.