I have a symmetric matrix, $\hat{A}, $which is an estimator of another true symmetric matrix, $A$. I would like to estimate the column space of $A$. I know I can do QR-Algorithm or use spectral decomposition to find non-zero eigenvectors of $\hat{A}$ and use these vectors to generate the column space.
I was wondering when QR give a better estimator than the spectral decomposition method.