## Subsection2.2.7Why we love unitary matrices

In Subsection 1.4.1, we looked at how sensitive solving

\begin{equation*} A x = b \end{equation*}

is to a change in the right-hand side

\begin{equation*} A ( x + \delta\!x) = b + \delta\!b \end{equation*}

when $A$ is nonsingular. We concluded that

\begin{equation*} \frac{\| \delta\!x \|}{\| x \|}\leq \begin{array}[t]{c} \underbrace{\| A \| \| A^{-1} \|} \\ \kappa( A ) \end{array} \frac{\| \delta\!b \|}{\| b \|}, \end{equation*}

when an induced matrix norm is used. Let's look instead at how sensitive matrix-vector multiplication is.

###### Homework2.2.7.1.

Let $A \in \Cnxn$ be nonsingular and $x \in \Cn$ a nonzero vector. Consider

\begin{equation*} y = A x \quad \mbox{and} \quad y + \delta\!y = A ( x + \delta\!x ). \end{equation*}

Show that

\begin{equation*} \frac{\| \delta\!y \|}{\| y \|}\leq \begin{array}[t]{c} \underbrace{\| A \| \| A^{-1} \|} \\ \kappa( A ) \end{array} \frac{\| \delta\!x \|}{\| x \|}, \end{equation*}

where $\| \cdot \|$ is an induced matrix norm.

Solution

Since $x = A^{-1} y$ we know that

\begin{equation*} \| x \| \leq \| A^{-1} \| \| y \| \end{equation*}

and hence

$$\frac{1}{\| y \|} \leq \| A^{-1} \| \frac{1}{\| x \|}.\label{chapter03-launch-1}\tag{2.2.1}$$

Subtracting $y = A x$ from $y + \delta\!y = A ( x + \delta\!x )$ yields

\begin{equation*} \delta\!y = A \delta\!x \end{equation*}

and hence

$$\| \delta\!y \| \leq \| A \| \| \delta\!x \|.\label{chapter03-launch-2}\tag{2.2.2}$$

Combining (2.2.1) and (2.2.2) yields the desired result.

There are choices of $x$ and $\delta\!x$ for which the bound is tight.

What does this mean? It means that if as part of an algorithm we use matrix-vector or matrix-matrix multiplication, we risk amplifying relative error by the condition number of the matrix by which we multiply. Now, we saw in Section 1.4 that $1 \leq \kappa( A ) \text{.}$ So, if we there are algorithms that only use matrices for which $\kappa(A) = 1 \text{,}$ then those algorithms don't amplify relative error.

###### Remark2.2.7.1.

We conclude that unitary matrices, which do not amplify the 2-norm of a vector or matrix, should be our tool of choice, whenever practical.