SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering 2013 Preview

I’ll be attending the SIAM CS&E meeting in Boston next week. This will be the first time I’ve attended this now biennial meeting, which has been running since 2000. The meeting is run by the SIAM Activity Group on Computational Science and Engineering, which is far and away SIAM’s largest activity group, with over 2000 members. The Boston conference is shaping up to be SIAM’s largest ever meeting (apart from ICIAM) with well over 1000 attendees.

The program, spread over five full days, shows the vitality of the field. I’ll be speaking on the first morning in the minisymposium Numerical Accuracy and Reliability Issues in High Performance Computing organized by Marc Baboulin and Ilse Ipsen. Unfortunately there are at least two other minisymposia that I’d like to attend at the same time!

If you are not able to attend you can get a feel for what’s going on by following the hashtag #SIAMCSE13 on Twitter. Also watch out for some live blogging of minisymposia from Paul Constantine and David Gleich; I may even have a go at this myself.

The Nearest Correlation Matrix

A correlation matrix is a symmetric matrix with unit diagonal and nonnegative eigenvalues. In 2000 I was approached by a London fund management company who wanted to find the nearest correlation matrix (NCM) in the Frobenius norm to an almost correlation matrix: a symmetric matrix having a significant number of (small) negative eigenvalues. This problem arises when the data from which the correlations are constructed is asynchronous or incomplete, or when models are stress-tested by artificially adjusting individual correlations. Solving the NCM problem (or obtaining a true correlation matrix some other way) is important in order to avoid subsequent calculations breaking down due to negative variances or volatilities, for example.

Algorithms

The convexity properties of the problem mean that there is a unique nearest correlation matrix, which is hence a global minimizer. In the 1990s several algorithms had been proposed for computing it, but none was guaranteed to work. Prompted by the approach from the company, I investigated the problem. I proved some results characterizing the solution and derived an alternating projections algorithm for computing it 1. The algorithm repeatedly projects onto the set of matrices with unit diagonal and the cone of symmetric positive semidefinite matrices. It is guaranteed to converge to the minimum, but does so at a linear rate. An important feature of the algorithm is that other projections can be added on. Thus, for example, if we want to leave the trailing principal submatrix of order three unchanged, we simply restore it at the end of each iteration 2, 3.

The alternating projections algorithm is widely used, but can be slow to converge, especially for large matrices 4. In 2006, Qi and Sun 5 derived a Newton method for the NCM problem. They work with the dual of the original problem, which is unconstrained. The objective function of the dual is not twice continuously differentiable, but by using the theory of strongly semismooth matrix functions Qi and Sun show that Newton’s method nevertheless has global quadratic convergence.

Ruediger Borsdorf and I, building on work in his M.Sc. thesis 3, built an algorithm that solves the Newton equations using minres with a Jacobi preconditioner (a nontrivial task since the coefficient matrix is not explicitly available), and has some other refinements described in 6. This algorithm has been implemented in the NAG Library 7.

In subsequent work, Borsdorf, Marcos Raydan and I 8 , 9 used the spectral projected gradient method (SPGM) to solve the k-factor NCM, in which the correlation matrix is constrained to have the form of a diagonal matrix plus a rank-k matrix. This problem variant arises in multifactor normal copula models, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and multivariate time series. One existing previous algorithm can fail to converge or solve the problem, but the SPGM has guaranteed convergence to a stationary point. This algorithm has also been implemented in the NAG Library.

The NCM problem has proved to be of very wide interest beyond the world of finance, as indicated by the fact that 1 is now my third best cited paper on the Web of Science. Recent applications in which the problem arises include reconstructing 20th century sea levels, genetic evaluations for thoroughbred horse breeding, modelling public health data sets, modelling storm damage of buildings, and a Kriging model for reservoirs.

Software

I regularly receive emails asking for software implementing algorithms for the NCM problem. I thought it would be useful to summarize what is available. In general, the Newton method is preferred, but the alternating projections method is more flexible as regards incorporating additional constraints.

Original NCM Problem

Alternating Projections Method

Newton Method

k-Factor NCM Problem

A MATLAB Alternating Projections Function

I thought it would be useful to provide my own MATLAB function nearcorr.m implementing the alternating projections algorithm. The listing is below. To see how it compares with the NAG code g02aa.m I ran the test code

%NEARCORR_TEST  Compare g02aa and nearcorr.

rng(10)                                  % Seed random number generators.
n = 100;
A = gallery('randcorr',n);               % Random correlation matrix. 
E  = randn(n)*1e-1;  A = A + (E + E')/2; % Perturb it.
tol = 1e-10;

% A = cor1399; tol = 1e-4;

fprintf('g02aa:\n')
maxits = int64(-1);  % For linear equation solver.
maxit = int64(-1);   % For Newton iteration.
tic
[~,X1,iter1,feval,nrmgrd,ifail] = g02aa(A,'errtol',tol,'maxits',maxits, ...
                                          'maxit',maxit);
toc

fprintf('  Newton steps taken: %d\n', iter1);
fprintf('  Norm of gradient of last Newton step: %6.4f\n', nrmgrd);
if ifail > 0, fprintf('  g02aa failed with ifail = %g\n', ifail), end

fprintf('nearcorr:\n')
tic
[X2,iter2] = nearcorr(A,tol,[],[],[],[],1);
toc
fprintf('  Number of iterations: %d\n', iter2);

fprintf('  Normwise relative difference between computed solutions:')
fprintf('%9.2e\n', norm(X1-X2,1)/norm(X1,1))

Running under Windows 7 on an Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor @4.4Ghz I obtained the following results, where the “real-life” matrix is based on stock data:

Matrix Code Time (secs) Iterations
1. Random (100), tol = 1e-10 g02aa 0.023 4
nearcorr 0.052 15
2. Random (500), tol = 1e-10 g02aa 0.48 4
nearcorr 3.01 26
3. Real-life (1399), tol = 1e-4 g02aa 6.8 5
nearcorr 100.6 68

The results show that while nearcorr can be fast for small dimensions, the number of iterations, and hence its run time, tends to increase with the dimension and it can be many times slower than the Newton method. This is a stark illustration of the difference between quadratic convergence and linear (with problem-dependent constant) convergence. Here is my MATLAB function nearcorr.m.

function [X,iter] = nearcorr(A,tol,flag,maxits,n_pos_eig,w,prnt)
%NEARCORR    Nearest correlation matrix.
%   X = NEARCORR(A,TOL,FLAG,MAXITS,N_POS_EIG,W,PRNT)
%   finds the nearest correlation matrix to the symmetric matrix A.
%   TOL is a convergence tolerance, which defaults to 16*EPS.
%   If using FLAG == 1, TOL must be a 2-vector, with first component
%   the convergence tolerance and second component a tolerance
%   for defining "sufficiently positive" eigenvalues.
%   FLAG = 0: solve using full eigendecomposition (EIG).
%   FLAG = 1: treat as "highly non-positive definite A" and solve
%             using partial eigendecomposition (EIGS).
%   MAXITS is the maximum number of iterations (default 100, but may
%   need to be increased).
%   N_POS_EIG (optional) is the known number of positive eigenvalues of A.
%   W is a vector defining a diagonal weight matrix diag(W).
%   PRNT = 1 for display of intermediate output.

%   By N. J. Higham, 13/6/01, updated 30/1/13, 15/11/14, 07/06/15.
%   Reference:  N. J. Higham, Computing the nearest correlation
%   matrix---A problem from finance. IMA J. Numer. Anal.,
%   22(3):329-343, 2002.

if ~isequal(A,A'), error('A must by symmetric.'), end
if nargin < 2 || isempty(tol), tol = length(A)*eps*[1 1]; end
if nargin < 3 || isempty(flag), flag = 0; end
if nargin < 4 || isempty(maxits), maxits = 100; end
if nargin < 6 || isempty(w), w = ones(length(A),1); end
if nargin < 7, prnt = 1; end

n = length(A);
if flag >= 1
   if nargin < 5 || isempty(n_pos_eig)
      [V,D] = eig(A); d = diag(D);
      n_pos_eig = sum(d >= tol(2)*d(n));
   end
   if prnt, fprintf('n = %g, n_pos_eig = %g\n', n, n_pos_eig), end
end

X = A; Y = A;
iter = 0;
rel_diffX = inf; rel_diffY = inf; rel_diffXY = inf;
dS = zeros(size(A));

w = w(:); Whalf = sqrt(w*w');

while max([rel_diffX rel_diffY rel_diffXY]) > tol(1)

   Xold = X;
   R = Y - dS;
   R_wtd = Whalf.*R;
   if flag == 0
      X = proj_spd(R_wtd);
   elseif flag == 1
      [X,np] = proj_spd_eigs(R_wtd,n_pos_eig,tol(2));
   end
   X = X ./ Whalf;
   dS = X - R;
   Yold = Y;
   Y = proj_unitdiag(X);
   rel_diffX = norm(X-Xold,'fro')/norm(X,'fro');
   rel_diffY = norm(Y-Yold,'fro')/norm(Y,'fro');
   rel_diffXY = norm(Y-X,'fro')/norm(Y,'fro');
   iter = iter + 1;
   if prnt
      fprintf('%2.0f:  %9.2e  %9.2e  %9.2e', ...
               iter, rel_diffX, rel_diffY, rel_diffXY)
      if flag >= 1, fprintf('  np = %g\n',np), else fprintf('\n'), end
   end
   if iter > maxits
       error(['Stopped after ' num2str(maxits) ' its. Try increasing MAXITS.'])
   end

end

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
function A = proj_spd(A)
%PROJ_SPD

if ~isequal(A,A'), error('Not symmetric!'), end
[V,D] = eig(A);
A = V*diag(max(diag(D),0))*V';
A = (A+A')/2; % Ensure symmetry.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
function [A,n_pos_eig_found] = proj_spd_eigs(A,n_pos_eig,tol)
%PROJ_SPD_EIGS

if ~isequal(A,A'), error('Not symmetric!'), end
k = n_pos_eig + 10; % 10 is safety factor.
if k > length(A), k = n_pos_eig; end
opts.disp = 0;
[V,D] = eigs(A,k,'LA',opts); d = diag(D);
j = (d > tol*max(d));
n_pos_eig_found = sum(j);
A = V(:,j)*D(j,j)*V(:,j)';  % Build using only the selected eigenpairs.
A = (A+A')/2; % Ensure symmetry.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
function A = proj_unitdiag(A)
%PROJ_SPD

n = length(A);
A(1:n+1:n^2) = 1;

Updates

  • Links updated August 4, 2014.
  • nearcorr.m corrected November 15, 2014: iter was incorrectly initialized (thanks to Mike Croucher for pointing this out).
  • Added link to Mike Croucher’s Python alternating directions code, November 17, 2014.
  • Corrected an error in the convergence test, June 7, 2015. Effect on performance will be minimal (thanks to Nataša Strabić for pointing this out).

Footnotes:

1

Nicholas J. Higham, Computing the Nearest Correlation Matrix—A Problem from Finance, IMA J. Numer. Anal. 22, 329–343, 2002.

2

Craig Lucas, Computing Nearest Covariance and Correlation Matrices, M.Sc. Thesis, University of Manchester, 2001.

3

Ruediger Borsdorf, A Newton Algorithm for the Nearest Correlation Matrix, M.Sc. Thesis, University of Manchester, 2007.

4

Rene Escalante and Marcos Raydan, Alternating Projection Methods, SIAM, 2011.

5

Hou-Duo Qi and Defeng Sun, A Quadratically Convergent Newton Method for Computing the Nearest Correlation Matrix, SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl. 28, 360-385, 2006

6

Ruediger Borsdorf and Nicholas J. Higham, A Preconditioned Newton Algorithm for the Nearest Correlation Matrix, IMA J. Numer. Anal. 30, 94-107, 2010.

8

Ruediger Borsdorf, Nicholas Higham and Marcos Raydan, Computing a Nearest Correlation Matrix with Factor Structure, SIAM J. Matrix Anal., Appl. 31, 2603-2622, 2010

9

Ruediger Borsdorf, Structured Matrix Nearness Problems: Theory and Algorithms, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Manchester, 2012.

The Lanczos Tapes

file://d:/dropbox/org/images/lanczos07.jpg
Charcoal sketch of Cornelius Lanczos by John Chirnside of UMIST.

Cornelius Lanczos (1893-1974) gave lectures at UMIST (a predecessor institution of The University of Manchester) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while he was a Professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Study. In 1972, UMIST Audio Visual Services made three video recordings lasting almost three hours of Lanczos talking about mathematics, his life, and Einstein. In two of the tapes he is speaking in a group discussion, while in the other he speaks eloquently about his life for 50 minutes, directly to camera and apparently without notes. The topics he covers include his experiences as

  • student of Eötvös and Fejér in Hungary,
  • theoretical physicist,
  • assistant of Albert Einstein in Germany,
  • numerical analyst and inventor of the tau method,
  • (re-)discoverer of the fast Fourier transform and singular value decomposition,
  • inventor of the Lanczos algorithm while working at the US National Bureau of Standards, and
  • head of the Theoretical Physics Department at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Study.

The charcoal sketch above hung for many years in the office of the administrator of the mathematics department at UMIST and now has pride of place on the wall in my office in the Alan Turing Building.

My colleague Stefan Güttel has produced a version of the videos with bookmarks linking to the main topics of discussion. We are pleased to make the videos available online on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of Cornelius Lanczos’s birth (February 2, 1893).

file://d:/dropbox/org/images/lanczos01.jpg
Cornelius Lanczos