[Rd] eigen in beta

Prof Brian Ripley ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Wed Apr 11 17:00:26 CEST 2007


On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Paul Gilbert wrote:

> Hmmm.  It is a bit disconcerting that make check passes and I can get a 
> fairly seriously wrong answer. Perhaps this test could be added to make 
> check.

Well, you have learnt something new about software engineering!  'make 
check' is supposed to test the operation of R, not compilers.

> Whether or not the one answer is correct may be questionable, but 
> there is no question that
>
> prod(eigen(z, symmetric = FALSE, only.values = TRUE)$values ) *
> prod(eigen(solve(z), symmetric = FALSE, only.values = TRUE)$values )
>  [1] 1.01677-0i
>
> is wrong. (The product of the determinants should equal the determinant of 
> the product, and the determinant of I is 1.)
>
> On this machine I am using GNU Fortran (GCC 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 
> 3.2.3-54)) 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-54),  which is a bit old but 
> not really old. (I am using gcc 4.1.1 on my home machine, but the failing 
> machine is suppose to be fairly new and "supported." (There is an OS upgrade 
> planned.)  Should I really be thinking of this as an old compiler?  Is the

Yes, a known bad compiler, as searching the list archives would have 
found out.  Don't use anything older that gcc 3.4.x on x86_64 Linux.

> compiler the most likely problem or is it possible I have a bad BLAS 
> configuration, or something else? Previous versions of R have compiled 
> without problems on this machine. (I am never very sure where to find all the 
> information to report for a problem like this. Is there a simple way to get 
> all the relevant information?)
>
> Paul Gilbert
>
> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> All the systems I tried this on give the 'correct' answer, including
>> 
>> x86_64 Linux, FC5 (gcc 4.1.1)
>> i686 Linux, FC5
>> ix86 Windows (both gcc 3.4.5 and gcc pre-4.3.0)
>> Sparc Solaris, with gcc3, gcc4 and SunPro compilers.
>> 
>> Mainly with R 2.5.0 beta, some with R-devel (where the code is unchanged).
>> 
>> We have seen problems specific to RHEL's Fortran compilers on x86_64 
>> several times before. I would strongly recommend compiler updates.
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
>> 
>>> Paul Gilbert wrote:
>>>> Here is the example. Pehaps others could check on other platforms. It is
>>>> only the first eigenvalue that is different.  I am relatively sure the
>>>> old values are correct, since I compare with an alternate calculation
>>>> using the expansion of a polynomial determinant.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> z <- t(matrix(c(
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, -0.0064083373167516857,
>>>> -0.14786612501440565826,  0.368411802235074137,
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,  0.0568624483195125444,
>>>> 0.08575928008564302762, -0.101993668348446601,
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,  0.0039684327579889069,
>>>> -0.00002857482925046247,  0.202241897806646448,
>>>>  1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, -0.0222834092601282285,
>>>> -0.09126708346036176145,  0.644249961695308682,
>>>>  0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, -0.0032676036920228878,
>>>> 0.16985862929849462888,  0.057282326361118636,
>>>>  0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,  0.0148488735227452068,
>>>> -0.06175528918915401677,  0.109566197834008949,
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, -0.0392756265125193960,
>>>> 0.04921079262665441212,  0.078176878215115805,
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, -0.0013937451966661973,
>>>> 0.02009823693764142133, -0.207228935136287512,
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0,  0.0273358858605219357,
>>>> 0.03830466468488327725,  0.224426004034737836,
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, -0.1456426235151105919,
>>>> 0.28688029213315069388,  0.326933845656016908,
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0,  0.0164670122082246559,
>>>> -0.21966261349875662590,  0.036404179329694988,
>>>>  0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1,  0.0146156940584119890,
>>>> 0.07505490943478997090,  0.077660578370038813
>>>>  ), 12, 12))
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> R-2.5.0 gives
>>>> >  eigen(z, symmetric = FALSE, only.values = TRUE)$values
>>>>  [1]  0.8465266+0.0000000i -0.0280087+0.6244992i -0.0280087-0.6244992i
>>>>  [4] -0.2908409+0.5522274i -0.2908409-0.5522274i -0.6228929+0.0000000i
>>>>  [7]  0.6177419+0.0000000i -0.5604582+0.1958709i -0.5604582-0.1958709i
>>>> [10]  0.1458799+0.4909300i  0.1458799-0.4909300i  0.3378356+0.0000000i
>>>> 
>>>> R-2.4.1 and many, many previous versions gave
>>>> >  eigen(z, symmetric = FALSE, only.values = TRUE)$values
>>>>  [1]  0.8794798+0.0000000i -0.0280087+0.6244992i -0.0280087-0.6244992i
>>>>  [4] -0.2908409+0.5522274i -0.2908409-0.5522274i -0.6228929+0.0000000i
>>>>  [7] -0.5604582+0.1958709i -0.5604582-0.1958709i  0.5847887+0.0000000i
>>>> [10]  0.1458799+0.4909300i  0.1458799-0.4909300i  0.3378356+0.0000000i
>>>> 
>>>> Sys.info()
>>>>                              sysname                              release
>>>>                              "Linux"                    "2.4.21-40.ELsmp"
>>>>                              version                             nodename
>>>> "#1 SMP Thu Feb 2 22:13:55 EST 2006"                           "mfa04559"
>>>>                              machine
>>>>                             "x86_64"
>>>> 
>>>> Paul Gilbert
>>> Hmm, I don't get that
>>> 
>>>> version$version.string
>>> [1] "R version 2.5.0 beta (2007-04-10 r41105)"
>>>> eigen(z, symmetric = FALSE, only.values = TRUE)$values
>>> [1]  0.8794798+0.0000000i -0.0280087+0.6244992i -0.0280087-0.6244992i
>>> [4] -0.2908409+0.5522274i -0.2908409-0.5522274i -0.6228929+0.0000000i
>>> [7] -0.5604582+0.1958709i -0.5604582-0.1958709i  0.5847887+0.0000000i
>>> [10]  0.1458799+0.4909300i  0.1458799-0.4909300i  0.3378356+0.0000000i
>>>> Sys.info()
>>>                              sysname                               release
>>>                              "Linux"                   "2.6.20-1.2933.fc6"
>>>                              version                              nodename
>>> "#1 SMP Mon Mar 19 11:38:26 EDT 2007" 
>>> "titmouse2.kubism.ku.dk"
>>>                              machine                                 login
>>>                               "i686"                                  "pd"
>>>                                 user
>>>                                 "pd"
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> And
>>> 
>>>> version$version.string
>>> [1] "R version 2.5.0 beta (2007-04-09 r41098)"
>>>>  eigen(z, symmetric = FALSE, only.values = TRUE)$values
>>> [1]  0.8794798+0.0000000i -0.0280087+0.6244992i -0.0280087-0.6244992i
>>> [4] -0.2908409+0.5522274i -0.2908409-0.5522274i -0.6228929+0.0000000i
>>> [7] -0.5604582+0.1958709i -0.5604582-0.1958709i  0.5847887+0.0000000i
>>> [10]  0.1458799+0.4909300i  0.1458799-0.4909300i  0.3378356+0.0000000i
>>>> Sys.info()
>>>                             sysname                              release
>>>                             "Linux"               "2.6.18.8-0.1-default"
>>>                             version                             nodename
>>> "#1 SMP Fri Mar 2 13:51:59 UTC 2007"                              "viggo"
>>>                             machine                                login
>>>                            "x86_64"                                 "pd"
>>>                                user
>>>                                "pd"
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The latter should be the actual build used in the current beta tarball
>>> (which is what you used, right?).
>>> 
>>> I would suspect one of the following:
>>> 
>>> - RHEL compilers
>>> - over-optimizing compiler settings
>>> - system blas/lapack libraries
>>> - system glibc
>>> 
>>> but Brian probably has more concrete information.
>>> 
>>>> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> We are only aware of better behaviour from LAPACK 3.1 (which is what I
>>>>> suppose you are talking about, that is R compiled with its internal
>>>>> LAPACK).
>>>>> 
>>>>> But in at least one case that means finding a complex set of
>>>>> eigenvalues where previously a real one was found.
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Paul Gilbert wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> I am having some trouble with a case where  eigen in R-beta  gives a
>>>>>> different largest value than in previous versions of R. Other values
>>>>>> seem to be the same. Before I spend too much time, is anyone aware of a
>>>>>> problem (symmetric = FALSE, only.values = TRUE).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Paul Gilbert
>>>>>> ==================================================================================== 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> La version française suit le texte anglais.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> This email may contain privileged and/or confidential
>>>>>> inform...{{dropped}}
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>> ==================================================================================== 
>>>> 
>>>> La version française suit le texte anglais.
>>>>
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>>>> 
>>>> This email may contain privileged and/or confidential 
>>>> inform...{{dropped}}
>>>> 
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>> 
>> 
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> La version française suit le texte anglais.
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
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