May 18 – 22, 2026
Virginia Tech
America/New_York timezone

Everything is Vecchia: Unifying low-rank and sparse inverse approximations

May 21, 2026, 11:50 AM
25m
McBryde Hall 129 (Virginia Tech)

McBryde Hall 129

Virginia Tech

Minisymposium Talk Polynomials, Krylov Methods and Applications Polynomials, Krylov Methods and Applications

Speaker

Robert Webber (University of California San Diego)

Description

The partial pivoted Cholesky approximation accurately represents matrices that are close to being low-rank. Meanwhile, the Vecchia approximation accurately represents matrices with inverse Cholesky factors that are close to being sparse. What happens if a partial Cholesky approximation is combined with a Vecchia approximation of the residual? We show how the sum can be rewritten as a Vecchia approximation of the original matrix with an amplified sparsity pattern. Thus, the Vecchia approximation is a superset for other factored matrix approximations and it has broad applicability.

Authors

Eagan Kaminetz (University of California San Diego) Robert Webber (University of California San Diego)

Presentation materials

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