Numpy Matrix Multiplication U*B*U.T Results in Non-symmetric Matrix

Question

In my program, I need the following matrix multiplication:

A = U * B * U^T

where B is an M * M symmetric matrix, and

Answer 1

You observed that So U, a 10*5 matrix, is indeed orthonormal except numerical rounding causes not exactly identity.

The same reasoning applies to A - it is symmetric except for numerical rounding:

In [176]: A=np.dot(U,np.dot(B,U.T)) 

In [177]: np.allclose(A,A.T)
Out[177]: True

In [178]: A-A.T
Out[178]: 
array([[  0.00000000e+00,  -2.22044605e-16,   1.38777878e-16,
          5.55111512e-17,  -2.49800181e-16,   0.00000000e+00,
          0.00000000e+00,  -1.11022302e-16,  -1.11022302e-16,
          0.00000000e+00],
       ...
       [  0.00000000e+00,   0.00000000e+00,   1.11022302e-16,
          2.77555756e-17,  -1.11022302e-16,   4.44089210e-16,
         -2.22044605e-16,  -2.22044605e-16,   0.00000000e+00,
          0.00000000e+00]])

I use np.allclose when comparing float arrays.

I also prefer ndarray and np.dot over np.matrix because element by element multiplication is just as common as matrix multiplication.

If the rest of the code depends on A being symmtric, then your trick may be a good choice. It's not computationally expensive.

For some reason einsum avoids the numerical issues:

In [189]: A1=np.einsum('ij,jk,lk',U,B,U)

In [190]: A1-A1.T
Out[190]: 
array([[ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.]])

In [193]: np.allclose(A,A1)
Out[193]: True