Confusing terminology in singular-poisson demo

Bug #1267578 reported by Nikolaus Rath
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
DOLFIN
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

http://fenicsproject.org/documentation/dolfin/1.3.0/python/demo/documented/singular-poisson/python/documentation.html says:

--snip--
AU=b

where U gives the coefficient for the basis functions expressing u.

Since we have pure Neumann boundary conditions, the matrix A is singular. There exists a vector e such that
Ae=0.

span {e} is the null space of A, and by removing the components of b that lie in the null space we make the system solvable.
--snip--

The last part does not make sense to me. Let A be a linear operator from V to W. Then the null space is a subspace of V, but b is defined in W. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to talk about components of b that lie in the null space.

I think a better formulation is

--snip--
AU=b

where U gives the coefficient for the basis functions expressing u.

Since we have pure Neumann boundary conditions, the matrix A is singular. There exists a vector e such that
Ae=0. We make the system solvable by removing the components of b that do not lie in the column space of A, which are also the components that lie in the null space of transpose(A).
--snip--

Nikolaus Rath (nrath)
summary: - Wrong terminology in singular-poisson demo
+ Confusing terminology in singular-poisson demo
Revision history for this message
Johannes Ring (johannr) wrote :

FEniCS no longer uses Launchpad for bug reports. Please consult the documentation on the FEniCS web page for where and how to (re)post your bug report: http://fenicsproject.org/support/

Changed in dolfin:
status: New → Invalid
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.