# The Fortran Gram-Schmidt Process Pitfall

Posted:   April 18, 2019

Status:   Completed

 Tags :   Gram-Schmidt Coding Fortran

 Categories :   Code-Snippets

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# Code the G-S process

## Online Solution

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, I googled the code for the Gram-Schmidt process. The first result is a note from MIT, on how to code the G-S process in MATLAB.

The code is pretty straight forward.

A stores n column vectors. Q stores the normalized orthogonal vectors, and R is the $n\times n$ matrix such that $A=Q\cdot R​$.

for j=1:n
v=A(:,j);
for i=1:j-1
R(i,j)=Q(:,i)'*A(:,j); % change A(:,j) to v for more accuracy
v=v-R(i,j)*Q(:,i);
end
R(j,j)=norm(v);
Q(:,j)=v/R(j,j);
end


## Unexpected behavior

But when I coded it in Fortran, weird things start to happen.

 do j=1,7
vec=Amat(:,j)
do i=1,j-1
Rmat(i,j) = dot_product(Qmat(:,i),vec(:))
vec(:)=vec(:)-Rmat(i,j)*Qmat(:,i) ! subtract the projection
end do  ! now vec the perpendicular to all Q(:,i)
Rmat(j,j) = cdsqrt(dot_product(vec(:),vec(:)))
Qmat(:,j)= vec(:)/Rmat(j,j)   ! normalize
end do


The above code does not give the expected result.

Moreover, when I check the rank of the Amat, it gives 3. But after orthogonalization, the rank of Qmat is 7!

call zgesvd("N", "N", dm, 7, Amat, dm, sing, Umat, dm, vt, 7, Awork, 25*dm, Arwork, inf)
write(*,*) "************************Rank****************************"
rank = 0
do i=1,7
if (sing(i).ge. 0.05d0) rank = rank +1
end do
write(*,*) inf


This is when I started to question everything. Is it that the zgesvd not for calculating the rank? Or is it that the process is not as such? I checked and checked everything again and again, making unit tests, giving it dummy input and everything seems fine. But the inconsistency keeps arising.

## Solution

I finally realized that the problem arises when the input are “realistic”, i.e., with limited precisions. When the inputs are “nice” such as

the results are correct anyway. But once you apply the above code to vectors such as

even if the two vectors are practically linearly dependent, the error in calculation will result in a tiny non-zero vector, which will later be normalized regardless of it’s magnitude. To avoid this, check abs(dot_product(vec(:),vec(:)) to remove such problem.

 do j=1,7
vec(:)=Amat(:,j)
if (j.gt.1) then
do i=1,j-1
vec(:)=vec(:)-dot_product(Qmat(:,i),vec(:))*Qmat(:,i) ! subtract the projection
end do  ! now vec the perpendicular to all Q(:,i)
end if
if (abs(dot_product(vec(:),vec(:))).le.0.01) then
Qmat(:,j)=vec(:)
else
Qmat(:,j)= vec(:)/sqrt(dot_product(vec(:),vec(:)))   ! normalize
end if
end do


Now the code gives the correct result.

# Thoughts

I used to read the different coding style between industry-grade code and academic-project code. I have always taken pride in my code and considered the industrial way of coding ugly and ungraceful. I actually considered myself quite aware of errors by machine precisions, and have applied quite many “academic” ways to cope with errors anyway. Besides, I have never really met any problem that specifically requires me to address such error.

I fell into the pitfall mainly because

1. I used the wrong academic-project “wheel”;
2. Fortran’s precision is quite high. This might not be an issue in Python, for $10^{-7}$ might be just stored as $0$ on some machine;
3. I didn’t anticipate the error would cause such a problem. I have not actually coded high-precision calculations from scratch. On the other hand, I might be accustomed to those languages where precisions are not very high.

In hindsight, I should have realized the code from note from MIT is purely academic-project grade code. You can see the example in that code. The example actually applies the code to

I wouldn’t say that my version of G-S is industrial grade, but this is surely a lesson: actual programs’ behaviors are much more complicated and a pure “theoretical” way of doing it might not work. Do not ever forget the error even if someone might have done the dirty work for you.