Forward error analysis of Gaussian elimination. I: Error and residual estimates (Q760168)

Part I of this work deals with the forward error analysis of Gaussian elimination for general linear algebraic systems. The error analysis is based on a linearization method which determines first order approximations of the absolute errors exactly. Superposition and cancellation of error effects, structure and sparsity of the coefficient matrices are completely taken into account by this method. The most important results of the paper are new condition numbers and associated optimal component-wise error and residual estimates for the solutions of linear algebraic systems under data perturbations and perturbations by rounding errors in the arithmetic floating-point operations. The estimate do not use vector or matrix norms. The relative data and rounding condition numbers as well as the associated backward and residual stability constants are scaling-invariant. The condition numbers can be computed approximately from the input data, the intermediate results, and the solution of the linear system. Numerical examples show that by these means realistic bounds of the errors and the residuals of approximate solutions can be obtained. Using the forward error analysis, also typical results of backward error analysis are deduced. Stability theorems and a priori error estimates for special classes of linear systems are proved in Part II of this work (reviewed below).