Singular Value
Bo & Shi
Definition of SVD
• Formally, the singular value decomposition of an
m*n real or complex matrix M is a factorization of
the form  = Σ 
• where U is an m*m real or complex unitary matrix,
Σ is an m*n rectangular diagonal matrix with
nonnegative real numbers on the diagonal, and V*
(the conjugate transpose of V) is an n×n real or
complex unitary matrix. The diagonal entries Σi,i of
Σ are known as the singular values of M. The m
columns of U and the n columns of V are called the
left-singular vectors and right-singular vectors of M
Geometrical interpretation of SVD
• for every linear map T:Kn → Km one can find
orthonormal bases of Kn and Km such that T
maps the i-th basis vector of Kn to a nonnegative multiple of the i-th basis vector of Km,
and sends the left-over basis vectors to zero.
With respect to these bases, the map T is
therefore represented by a diagonal matrix with
non-negative real diagonal entries.
Geometrical interpretation of SVD
• The SVD decomposes M into three simple
transformations: a rotation V*, a scaling Σ along
the rotated coordinate axes and a second
rotation U.
Range, null-space, rank
• Range
▫ The range of A is the set of all vectors v for which
the equation Ax = v has a solution.
• Null-space
▫ The null-space of A is the set of all the solutions to
the equation Av = 0.
• Rank
▫ The rank of A is equal to its number of linearly
independent columns, and also to its number of
linearly independent rows.
Orthonormal matrix
SVD of a Square Matrix
• If A is square matrix, then U,Σ and V are also
square Matrix.
Condition number
• the ratio of the largest(in magnitude) of the wj ’s
to the smallest of the wj ’s.
▫ (1) infinite: martrix is singular
▫ (2)ill-conditoned : condition number is too
large, that is, if its reciprocal approaches the
machine’s floating-point precision
Three cases
• 1. b=0.
• 2. vector b on the right-hand side is not zero,
and b lies in the range of A or not.
• 3. b is not in the range of the singular matrix A.
First case
• b=0
• It is solved immediately by SVD.
• The solution is any linear combination of the
columns returned by the nullspace method
Second case
• Vector b on the right-hand side is not zero, and b
lies in the range of A or not.
▫ Specially, when  = 0,  1/ =0.
• This will be the solution vector of smallest length;
the columns of V that are in the nullspace
complete the specification of the solution set.
Third case
• b is not in the range of the singular matrix A.
• The number r is called the residual of the
An example
SVD for Fewer Equations than
• If we have fewer linear equations M than
unknowns N, then we are not expecting a unique
solution. Usually there will be an N*M
dimensional family of solutions (which is the
nullity, absent any other degeneracies), but the
number could be larger. If we want to find this
whole solution space, then SVD can readily do
the job: Use solve to get one (the shortest)
solution, then use nullspace to get a set of basis
vectors for the nullspace. Our solutions are the
former plus any linear combination of the latter.
Constructing an Orthonormal Basis
• Construct an orthonormal basis for subspace by
▫ Form an M*N matrix A whose N columns are our
vectors. Construct an SVD object from the matrix.
The columns of the matrix U are our desired
orthonormal basis vectors.
Approximation of Matrices
• The equation A=UWV can be rewritten to
express any matrix  as a sum of outer
products of columns of U and rows of   , with
the “weighting factors” being the singular values

• If we ever encounter a situation where most of
the singular values  of a matrix A are very
small, then A will be well-approximated by only
a few terms in the sum. This means that we have
to store only a few columns of U and V (the same
k ones) and we will be able to recover, with good
accuracy, the whole matrix.
• It is very efficient to multiply such an
approximated matrix by a vector x: We just dot x
with each of the stored columns of V, multiply
the resulting scalar by the corresponding  ,
and accumulate that multiple of the
corresponding column of U. If our matrix is
approximated by a small number K of singular
values, then this computation of A·x takes only
about K(M+N) multiplications, instead of MN
for the full matrix.
A application of image transformation
Thank you
• Reference
▫ Numerical Recipes
▫ Wikipedia about Singular Value Decomposition
▫ Fundamentals of Computer Graphics

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