https://github.com/cran/Matrix
Tip revision: f3196dcf51bdea0ef97a85321a8f6ba3ba6fae4e authored by Martin Maechler on 08 March 2019, 14:33:45 UTC
version 1.2-16
version 1.2-16
Tip revision: f3196dc
Design-issues.Rnw
\documentclass{article}
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%%\VignetteIndexEntry{Design Issues in Matrix package Development}
%%\VignetteDepends{Matrix}
\SweaveOpts{engine=R,eps=FALSE,pdf=TRUE,width=5,height=3,strip.white=true,keep.source=TRUE}
% ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
\title{Design Issues in Matrix package Development}
\author{Martin Maechler and Douglas Bates\\R Core Development Team
\\\email{maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch}, \email{bates@r-project.org}}
\date{Spring 2008 ({\tiny typeset on \tiny\today})}
%
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
This is a (\textbf{currently very incomplete}) write-up of the many smaller and
larger design decisions we have made in organizing functionalities in the
Matrix package.
Classes: There's a rich hierarchy of matrix classes, which you can
visualize as a set of trees whose inner (and ``upper'') nodes are
\emph{virtual} classes and only the leaves are non-virtual ``actual'' classes.
Functions and Methods:
- setAs()
- others
\end{abstract}
%% Note: These are explained in '?RweaveLatex' :
<<preliminaries, echo=FALSE>>=
options(width=75)
@
\section{The Matrix class structures}
\label{sec:classes}
Take Martin's DSC 2007 talk to depict class hierarchy.
\\ --- --- --- %% \hrule[1pt]{\textwidth}
\subsection{Diagonal Matrices}
\label{ssec:diagMat}
The class of diagonal matrices is worth mentioning for several reasons.
First, we have wanted such a class, because \emph{multiplication}
methods are particularly simple with diagonal matrices.
The typical constructor is \Rfun{Diagonal} whereas the accessor
(as for traditional matrices), \Rfun{diag} simply returns the
\emph{vector} of diagonal entries:
<<diag-class>>=
library(Matrix)
(D4 <- Diagonal(4, 10*(1:4)))
str(D4)
diag(D4)
@
We can \emph{modify} the diagonal in the traditional way
(via method definition for \Rfun{diag<-}):
<<diag-2>>=
diag(D4) <- diag(D4) + 1:4
D4
@
Note that \textbf{unit-diagonal} matrices (the identity matrices of linear algebra)
with slot \code{diag = "U"} can have an empty \code{x} slot, very
analogously to the unit-diagonal triangular matrices:
<<unit-diag>>=
str(I3 <- Diagonal(3)) ## empty 'x' slot
getClass("diagonalMatrix") ## extending "sparseMatrix"
@
Originally, we had implemented diagonal matrices as \emph{dense} rather than sparse
matrices. After several years it became clear that this had not been
helpful really both from a user and programmer point of view.
So now, indeed the \code{"diagonalMatrix"} class does extend the
\code{"sparseMatrix"} one. However, we do \emph{not} store explicitly
where the non-zero entries are, and the class does \emph{not} extend any of
the typical sparse matrix classes, \code{"CsparseMatrix"},
\code{"TsparseMatrix"}, or \code{"RsparseMatrix"}.
Rather, the \code{diag()}onal (vector) is the basic part of such a matrix,
and this is simply the \code{x} slot unless the \code{diag} slot is \code{"U"},
the unit-diagonal case, which is the identity matrix.
Further note, e.g., from the \code{?$\,$Diagonal} help page, that we provide
(low level) utility function
\code{.sparseDiagonal()} with wrappers
\code{.symDiagonal()} and \code{.trDiagonal()} which will provide diagonal
matrices inheriting from \code{"CsparseMatrix"} which may be advantageous
in \emph{some cases}, but less efficient in others, see the help page.
\section{Matrix Transformations}
\label{sec:trafos}
\subsection{Coercions between Matrix classes}
\label{ssec:coerce}
You may need to transform Matrix objects into specific shape (triangular,
symmetric), content type (double, logical, \dots) or storage structure
(dense or sparse).
Every useR should use \code{as(x, <superclass>)} to this end, where
\code{<superclass>} is a \emph{virtual} Matrix super class, such as
\code{"triangularMatrix"} \code{"dMatrix"}, or \code{"sparseMatrix"}.
In other words, the user should \emph{not} coerce directly to a specific
desired class such as \code{"dtCMatrix"}, even though that may
occasionally work as well.
Here is a set of rules to which the Matrix developers and the users
should typically adhere:
\begin{description}
\item[Rule~1]: \code{as(M, "matrix")} should work for \textbf{all} Matrix
objects \code{M}.
\item[Rule~2]: \code{Matrix(x)} should also work for matrix like
objects \code{x} and always return a ``classed'' Matrix.
Applied to a \code{"matrix"} object \code{m}, \code{M. <- Matrix(m)} can be
considered a kind of inverse of \code{m <- as(M, "matrix")}.
For sparse matrices however, \code{M.} well be a
\code{CsparseMatrix}, and it is often ``more structured'' than \code{M},
e.g.,
<<Matrix-ex>>=
(M <- spMatrix(4,4, i=1:4, j=c(3:1,4), x=c(4,1,4,8))) # dgTMatrix
m <- as(M, "matrix")
(M. <- Matrix(m)) # dsCMatrix (i.e. *symmetric*)
@
\item[Rule~3]: All the following coercions to \emph{virtual} matrix
classes should work:\\
\begin{enumerate}
\item \code{as(m, "dMatrix")}
\item \code{as(m, "lMatrix")}
\item \code{as(m, "nMatrix")}
\item \code{as(m, "denseMatrix")}
\item \code{as(m, "sparseMatrix")}
\item \code{as(m, "generalMatrix")}
\end{enumerate}
whereas the next ones should work under some assumptions:
\begin{enumerate}
\item \code{as(m1, "triangularMatrix")} \\
should work when \code{m1} is a triangular matrix, i.e. the upper or
lower triangle of \code{m1} contains only zeros.
\item \code{as(m2, "symmetricMatrix")}
should work when \code{m2} is a symmetric matrix in the sense of
\code{isSymmetric(m2)} returning \code{TRUE}.
Note that this is typically equivalent to something like
\code{isTRUE(all.equal(m2, t(m2)))}, i.e., the lower and upper
triangle of the matrix have to be equal \emph{up to small
numeric fuzz}.
\end{enumerate}
\end{description}
\section{Session Info}
<<sessionInfo, results=tex>>=
toLatex(sessionInfo())
@
%not yet
%\bibliography{Matrix}
\end{document}