bugGNU Octave - Bugs: bug #36562, Sparse matrix operations with NaN...

 
 

bug #36562: Sparse matrix operations with NaN do not follow IEEE standard

Submitter:  None
Submitted:  Wed 30 May 2012 03:12:51 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  Libraries Severity:  3 - Normal
Priority:  5 - Normal Item Group:  Incorrect Result
Status:  Confirmed Assigned to:  None
Originator Name:  Stuart Archibald Originator Email:  -email is unavailable-
Open/Closed:  * Open Release:  * dev
Operating System:  * Any Fixed Release:  None
Planned Release:  None
* Mandatory Fields

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Tue 18 Apr 2023 04:05:14 PM UTC, comment #8: 

Octave 8.2.0 - no change from comment #1 behavior

Nicholas Jankowski <nrjank>
Group Member
Mon 21 Nov 2016 07:42:22 PM UTC, comment #7: 

At least we understand what behavior needs to be implemented.  At a minimum, Octave needs to check whether each operand contains a NaN and it needs to specifically guarantee that those locations result in NaN at the output.  The subsequent decision, about whether to convert to full if it would save space, should probably be left up to Octave, or to the sparse_auto_mutate code.

Pseudo-code which might work for Z = X op Y:


  list1 = isnan (X);
  list2 = isnan (Y);
  tmp = X op Y;
  tmp(list1) = NaN;
  tmp(list2) = NaN;
  Z = tmp;


Of course, all of that would need to be in C++.

Another choice would be to look carefully at the code which performs the operation 'op'.  For sparse matrices, I believe the code is equivalent to


nonzero1 = nonzeros (X);
nonzero2 = nonzeros (Y);
elements_to_operate_on = intersection (nonzero1, nonzero2);
Z = X(elements_to_operate_on) op Y(elements_to_operate_on);


The "intersection" function for sparse matrices in C++ could be changed to include elements where only one of the matrices had a NaN.


Rik <rik5>
Group administrator
Mon 21 Nov 2016 05:49:15 PM UTC, comment #6: 


Matlab R2016a:

>> xs = sparse ([1 0; 0 2]);
ys = sparse ([1 NaN; 0 0]);
xs .* ys

ans =

   (1,1)        1
   (1,2)      NaN


Rik, I understand your suggestion may not be worse than the current status, but it seems the memory issue does happen in Matlab.


Carlo de Falco <cdf>
Group Member
Mon 21 Nov 2016 04:44:23 PM UTC, comment #5: 

@Carlo: The memory problem already exists.  After one of the operations involving NaN, every single element will become NaN and require storage.  In fact, the situation will be worse than a full matrix because there will be the extra overhead of the sparse matrix implementation.

In general, even without sparse_auto_mutate set to true, Octave will convert to full for operations that are likely to result in a full matrix.  From the documentation,


22.1.4.2 Return Types of Operators and Functions

The two basic reasons to use sparse matrices are to reduce the memory usage and to not have
to do calculations on zero elements. The two are closely related in that the computation
time on a sparse matrix operator or function is roughly linear with the number of nonzero
elements.

Therefore, there is a certain density of nonzero elements of a matrix where it no longer
makes sense to store it as a sparse matrix, but rather as a full matrix. For this reason
operators and functions that have a high probability of returning a full matrix will always
return one. For example adding a scalar constant to a sparse matrix will almost always
make it a full matrix, and so the example,

speye (3) + 0

 1 0 0
0 1 0
0 0 1
returns a full matrix as can be seen.


For addition and subtraction, the sparse matrices are already converted to full and the NaN is added/subtracted and the operation follows IEEE guidelines.  For Sparse Matrix OPERATION Scalar NaN, the code would be easy to modify to check for NaN and then return


NaN (size (Xsparse))


For Matrix OPERATION Matrix operations it becomes a bit annoying because one would have to check for isnan() on every element.  This may be what Matlab does.  Can you test the following?


xs = sparse ([1 0; 0 2]);
ys = sparse ([1 NaN; 0 0]);
xs .* ys




Rik <rik5>
Group administrator
Mon 21 Nov 2016 10:48:04 AM UTC, comment #4: 

Rik :


>> Msparse = sparse ([1 0; 0 3]);
NaN .* Msparse

ans =

   (1,1)      NaN
   (2,1)      NaN
   (1,2)      NaN
   (2,2)      NaN


so your solution does not seem to be compatible.

Anyway, I wouldn't like that solution even if it were compatible
as any error in filling the elements of a large sparse matrix would result in out-of-memory.


Carlo de Falco <cdf>
Group Member
Sun 20 Nov 2016 03:25:31 PM UTC, comment #3: 

Any obvious solution would be for NaN to force all matrices into a full implementation.

What does Matlab do for


Msparse = sparse ([1 0; 0 3]);
NaN .* Msparse



Rik <rik5>
Group administrator
Sat 19 Nov 2016 09:45:39 PM UTC, comment #2: 

This issue still exists with Octave 4.2.0.

Hartmut <hardy>
Thu 31 May 2012 08:43:26 PM UTC, comment #1: 

Confirmed on a recent (5/31/12) development tip.

The issue is more general than just divide so I have changed the bug Summary.

At present, I can verify that multiply and divide are affected while addition and subtraction behaves correctly.

The issue appears to be a side effect of the way that sparse matrices improve calculation performance.  In general, math operations like multiply and divide only need to be performed on the non-zero elements of a sparse matrix.  However, a NaN is different and should affect all elements of the matrix.

Below is some simple code to illustrate the problem.


Mfull = [1 0; 0 3];
Msparse = sparse (Mfull);

NaN .* Mfull
ans =

   NaN   NaN
   NaN   NaN

NaN .* Msparse
ans =

Compressed Column Sparse (rows = 2, cols = 2, nnz = 2 [50%])

  (1, 1) -> NaN
  (2, 2) -> NaN

NaN ./ Mfull
ans =

   NaN   NaN
   NaN   NaN

NaN ./ Msparse

ans =

   NaN  -Inf
  -Inf   NaN



Rik <rik5>
Group administrator
Wed 30 May 2012 03:12:51 PM UTC, original submission:  

rdivide with NaN as first argument does not behave as expected with sparse array as second argument. NaN/0 = NaN, which implies NaN rdivided by sparse should give NaN's in the positions of the the zero pattern as well as NaN's in the non-zero pattern.

Example

octave:1> rdivide(NaN,sparse([1,3],[1,3],[1,3]))
ans =

   NaN  -Inf  -Inf
  -Inf  -Inf  -Inf
  -Inf  -Inf   NaN


I would expect the answer to be:

ans =
   NaN   NaN   NaN
   NaN   NaN   NaN
   NaN   NaN   NaN


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file #25956:  sparseNaNbug.m added by None (68B - text/x-objcsrc - Script demonstrates the problem)

 

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    Follow 6 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2014-01-19 mtmiller CategoryNone Libraries
        Release3.4.3 dev
        Operating SystemGNU/Linux Any
    2012-05-31 rik5 StatusNone Confirmed
        SummaryNaN/Inf behaviour unexpected in sparse rdivide Sparse matrix operations with NaN do not follow IEEE standard
    2012-05-30 None Attached File- Added sparseNaNbug.m, #25956

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