Question

I wrote some code to solve the general eigenvalue problem and now I am comparing my results against LAPACK’s DSPGVX function. I just worked with this example.

So I obtained the 4 auto vectors

{
 {-0.0319133, -0.265466, -0.713483,  0.64765},
 {-0.425628,  -0.520961, -0.714215,  0.193227},
 { 0.32702,    0.565845, -0.37129,  -0.659561},
 {-0.682699,  -0.056645,  0.0771025, 0.724409}
}

and auto values

{-2.22545, 1.12704, -0.454756, 0.100076}

both with my code and with Mathematica and results agree.

But in the previous link, auto vectors reported from LAPACK are completely different.

 Eigenvalues
    -0.4548  0.1001
 Selected eigenvectors
          1       2
 1   0.3080  0.4469
 2   0.5329  0.0371
 3  -0.3496 -0.0505
 4  -0.6211 -0.4743

Whom should I trust?

P.S. I also checked that my auto values/autovectors are correct since they yield A*x-lambda*B*x=0, while the values from LAPACK do not.

Answer 1

It looks like DSGPVX is solving A*lambda = B*x*lambda; Matlab gives the DSGPVX solution to your problem using “eig”, though Matlab’s documentation is correct. My guess is this a bug in the DSGPVX documentation.

>> a=[0.24 0.39 0.42 -0.16;0.39 -0.11 0.79 0.63;0.42 0.79 -0.25 0.48;-0.16 0.63 0.48 -0.03];
>> b=[4.16 -3.12 0.56 -0.1;-3.12 5.03 -0.83 1.09;0.56 -0.83 0.76 0.34;-0.1 1.09 0.34 1.18];
>> [v,d]=eig(a,b)

v =

   -0.0690    0.3080   -0.4469   -0.5528
   -0.5740    0.5329   -0.0371   -0.6766
   -1.5428   -0.3496    0.0505   -0.9276
    1.4004   -0.6211    0.4743    0.2510


d =

   -2.2254         0         0         0
         0   -0.4548         0         0
         0         0    0.1001         0
         0         0         0    1.1270

>> norm(a*v-b*v*d)

ans =

   1.5001e-15