, 1 min read

Diagonal of Squared Jacobian

Assume $f$ is a $m$-vector valued function in $n$-variables, i.e., $f:U\subseteq\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}^m$. The Jacobian is given by

$$ J = \begin{pmatrix} f_{x_1}^{(1)} & \cdots & f_{x_n}^{(1)} \\ \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\ f_{x_1}^{(m)} & \cdots & f_{x_n}^{(m)} \\ \end{pmatrix} $$

We use

$$ f_{x_i}^{(j)} = {\partial f^{(j)}\over\partial x_i}. $$

The diagonal elements $D_{ii}$ of $D := J^T J \in\mathbb{R}^{m\times m}$ are

$$ D_{ii} = \left(f_{x_i}^{(1)}\right)^2 + \left(f_{x_i}^{(2)}\right)^2 + \cdots + \left(f_{x_i}^{(m)}\right)^2 . $$

One diagonal element can be computed in $\mathcal{O}(m)$ multiplications and $\mathcal{O}(m)$ additions. All $m$ diagonals can therefore be computed in $\mathcal{O}(m^2)$ multiplications and $\mathcal{O}(m^2)$ additions. That's the same effort as one matrix-vector multiplication.

Open questions:

  1. How to fetch the diagonal elements in case of a matrix-free setting?
  2. In case of projections with $(1,0,\ldots,0)$, $(0,1,\ldots,0)$, etc., do we incur too much effort?