I took Movie Lens 100K data without ratings and ran non-weighted ALS in
Matlab.
I set number of features k=2000, which is larger than the input matrix
(1000 x 1700).
I used QR to do the inversion.
It runs without problems.
Can you share your data?



On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Koobas <[email protected]> wrote:

> Just to throw another bit.
> Just like Ted was saying.
> If you take the largest singular value over the smallest singular value,
> you get your condition number.
> If it turns out to be 10^16, then you're loosing all the digits of double
> precision accuracy,
> meaning that your solver is nothing more than a random number generator.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Dan Filimon 
> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> For what it's worth, here's what I remember from my Numerical Analysis
>> course.
>>
>> The thing we were taught to use to figure out whether the matrix is ill
>> conditioned is the condition number of a matrix (k(A) = norm(A) *
>> norm(A^-1)). Here's a nice explanation of it [1].
>>
>> Suppose you want to solve Ax = b. How much worse results will you get
>> using
>> A if you're not really solving Ax = b but A(x + delta) = b + epsilon (x is
>> still a solution for Ax = b).
>> So, by perturbing the b vector by epsilon, how much worse is delta going
>> to
>> be? There's a short proof [1, page 4] but the inequality you get is:
>>
>> norm(delta) / norm(x) <= k(A) * norm(epsilon) / norm(b)
>>
>> The rule of thumb is that if m = log10(k(A)), you lose m digits of
>> accuracy. So, equivalently, if m' = log2(k(A)) you lose m' bits of
>> accuracy.
>> Since floats are 32bits, you can decide that say, at most 2 bits may be
>> lost, therefore any k(A) > 4 is not acceptable.
>>
>> Anyway there are lots of possible norms and you need to look at ways of
>> actually interpreting the condition number but from what I learned this is
>> probably the thing you want to be looking at.
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> [1] http://www.math.ufl.edu/~kees/ConditionNumber.pdf
>> [2] http://www.rejonesconsulting.com/CS210_lect07.pdf
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Sean Owen <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > I think that's what I'm saying, yes. Small rows X shouldn't become
>> > large rows of A -- and similarly small changes in X shouldn't mean
>> > large changes in A. Not quite the same thing but both are relevant. I
>> > see that this is just the ratio of largest and smallest singular
>> > values. Is there established procedure for evaluating the
>> > ill-conditioned-ness of matrices -- like a principled choice of
>> > threshold above which you say it's ill-conditioned, based on k, etc.?
>> >
>> > On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Koobas <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > > So, the problem is that the kxk matrix is ill-conditioned, or is there
>> > more
>> > > to it?
>> > >
>> >
>>
>
>

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