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I'm trying to determine the exact complexity of finding an $n\times n$ matrix inverse of $A$. If it is known that the complexity of Gaussian elimination is $\frac{2}{3}n^3 + \frac{1}{2}n^2+O(n)$, then is it true that the complexity of finding $A^{-1}$ should be about twice same, since we are effectively doing two sets of Gaussian eliminations in parallel plus some row interchanges and multiplications?

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

D.W.
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No, it's not true. You can use Gaussian elimination to invert a matrix in $O(n^3)$ time, but there are other algorithms that are even faster. The complexity of a problem is the running time of the fastest algorithm for that problem. Therefore, it is not correct that the complexity of matrix inversion is $\Theta(n^3)$.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_elimination#Computational_efficiency, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_multiplication_algorithm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_of_mathematical_operations#Matrix_algebra, https://scicomp.stackexchange.com/q/22105/4274, Complexity class of Matrix Inversion.

D.W.
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