On Jun 12, 10:24 pm, Aaron Meurer <asmeu...@gmail.com> wrote: > If the eigenvalues cannot be expressed in radicals, then it doesn't > matter what method you use to compute them.
What about symbolic elements ? Or exact elements ? > > And for whatever reason, people always seem to be confused about this. > The general fifth order and higher polynomial does not have a > solution in radicals, and you can construct specific fifth order and > higher polynomials whose roots are not expressible in radicals (like > x**5 - x + 1). But that doesn't mean that *all* fifth order > polynomials don't have solutions in radicals. It's very easy to > construct a polynomial of any degree that has solutions in radicals. > For example (x - 1)**n is a nth degree polynomial, and the roots are > all 1. It's even possible to have an irreducible polynomial of degree > 5 or greater whose solution is expressible in radicals. You would find that you were wrong in your last statement. If a polynomial has solutions in radicals, then it is necessarily a reducible polynomial. If x0, x1, x2, ... are the exact solutions in radicals then (x - x0)(x - x1)... is the reduced polynomial. But we don't want to discuss the theoretical subtleties of the abel- ruffini theorem. My point is that we can't be sure that an arbitrary matrix will have such a well-conditioned equation like (x - a)**n. Thus the charpoly method (berwkowitz OR det(A-x*I), doesn't matter) is not a good method, as it is not reliable for n > 5. The method will not return with an exact eigenvalue for large matrices. > > So there's no reason to just "give up" if the polynomial is degree 5 > or higher unless you are always solving the general equation. You can > easily create a square matrix of any size whose eigenvalues are easily > expressed (in radicals, or for example just integers). Yes, there > will be cases where it can only produce roots in the form of RootOf, > but either just let those pass through, or raise the error only when > that happens (depending on if it works to just let them pass through). RootOf is a good method, but only if the eigenval is the final result desired by the user. What if the user wants the eigenvectors or the SVD ? Maybe we could follow the wolfram-alpha example. It returns with "root of <charpoly> near <approximate solution>". So, that RootOf objects could return the approximate value if explicitly asked for. > > And by the way, maybe you were thinking that the characteristic > polynomial isn't computed by det(A - x*I), as is often taught in > linear algebra courses? Didn't get you here. det(A - x*I) or berkowitz both give a charpoly. So it wouldn't matter which we use, other than the fact that one is faster than the other. > > Aaron Meurer > > > > > > > > On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 6:49 AM, SherjilOzair <sherjiloz...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Jun 12, 3:09 am, Vinzent Steinberg > > <vinzent.steinb...@googlemail.com> wrote: > >> On 11 Jun., 10:47, SherjilOzair <sherjiloz...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> > Do you require to solve eigenvalue problems of matrices bigger than > >> > 4*4 ? > >> > How are you doing it currently ? > >> > Matrix.diagonalize only works for matrices smaller than 5*5, as > >> > polys.roots can only solve degree 4 equations and less. > > >> This is not entirely true, because we can find roots of higher order > >> using for examples factorization. But yes, for equations of degree > >> greater than 4 there is no general algorithm. But this does not matter > >> in this case, because sympy does not calculate eigenvalues using the > >> characteristic polynomial AFAIK. > > > Arbitrary higher-order equations can not be solved. > > And characteristic polynomial of an arbitrary matrix is arbitrary. > > This means, that we can't use that method to compute eigenvals > > reliably. > > I don't think there are any other direct methods, though. > > > sympy uses this method. > > > def berkowitz_eigenvals(self, **flags): > > """Computes eigenvalues of a Matrix using Berkowitz method. > > """ > > return roots(self.berkowitz_charpoly(Dummy('x')), **flags) > > > eigenvals = berkowitz_eigenvals > > > Or are you referring to something else ? > > >> Vinzent > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "sympy" group. > > To post to this group, send email to sympy@googlegroups.com. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > sympy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > > For more options, visit this group > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To post to this group, send email to sympy@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sympy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en.