What are Schur complements, anyway? (Q1077488)

This paper treats the Schur complement of a partitioned matrix whose use goes back more than 130 years. It shows how several modern manifestations of this concept can be viewed in a unified way. Classically, Schur complements can be used to determine the rank of partitioned matrices. More recently the concept of a generalized inverse has played a role in defining Schur complements and finding optimal ranks of partitioned matrices. Finally shorted and complementable matrices are treated from a Schur complement, Schur compression viewpoint.