clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) (01/18/88)
(SF = Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King's College Road) (GB = Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street) (WB = Wallberg Building, 184 College Street) SUMMARY: NUMERICAL ANALYSIS SEMINAR, Tuesday, January 26, 10 am, WB242 -- John Butcher: "Singly-Implicit Methods" A.I. SEMINAR, Tuesday, January 26, 2 pm, SF1105 -- Robin Cohen: "Implementing a model for understanding goal-oriented discourse" NUMERICAL ANALYSIS SEMINAR, Friday, January 29, 3 pm, GB220 -- James Demmel: "The Probability that a Numerical Analysis Problem is Difficult" ------------- NUMERICAL ANALYSIS SEMINAR, Tuesday, January 26, 10 am, WB242 Professor John Butcher The University of Auckland "Singly-Implicit Methods" For an implicit multistage method, such as a Runge-Kutta method, for which $A$ denotes the matrix showing the dependence of the internal stage values on the derivatives at these stage values, the implementation costs depend heavily on the cost of solving a linear system based on a matrix of the form $I-hAJ$. In the case of an $s$-stage method and an $N$ dimensional problem, the linear algebra costs go up like $s sup 3 N sup 3$. To avoid the factor $s sup 3$, diagonally-implicit methods are often proposed but these have some limitations. A more general approach is considered here, in which $A$ is constrained only by the requirement of having a 1-point spectrum. Advantages and disadvantages of this generalization will be dis- cussed and prospects are assessed for the construction of efficient algo- rithms based on singly-implicit methods. A.I. SEMINAR, Tuesday, January 26, 2 pm, SF1105 Professor Robin Cohen University of Waterloo "Implementing a model for understanding goal-oriented discourse" NUMERICAL ANALYSIS SEMINAR, Friday, January 29, 3 pm, GB220 Dr. James Demmel Courant Institute "The Probability that a Numerical Analysis Problem is Difficult" Numerous problems in numerical analysis, including matrix inversion, eigen- value calculations and polynomial zero finding, share the following pro- perty: the difficulty of solving a given problem is large when the distance from that problem to the nearest "ill-posed" one is small. For example, the closer a matrix is to the set of noninvertible matrices, the larger its condition number with respect to inversion. We show that the sets of ill- posed problems for matrix inversion, eigenproblems, and polynomial zero finding all have a common algebraic and geometric structure which lets us compute the probability distribution of the distance from a "random" prob- lem to the set. From this probability distribution we derive, for example, the distribution of the condition number of a random matrix. We examine the relevance of this theory to the analysis and construction of numerical algorithms destined to be run in finite precision arithmetic. -- Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 (416) 978-4058 {allegra,cornell,decvax,linus,utzoo}!utcsri!clarke