Hacktoberfest 2026: le issue che i maintainer hanno segnato per ottobre, aperte e adatte ai principianti. Sfoglia le issue Hacktoberfest

Precision loss in Hessian computation

Aperta
#3,104 11 commenti 0 reazioni 0 assegnatari Vedi su GitHub

I maintainer di solito rispondono entro 1 giorno

@blegat ci sta già lavorando.

Dal 16/10/2026.

  • #3105 di @blegat — aperta

Valutazione

Difficoltà
5/5
Tempo stimato
Più di una settimana
Idoneità per principianti
15/100
Tipo di issue
Bug
Chiarezza
Da chiarire
Stato di attività
Attiva
Ambito
backend

Direzione di ricerca

Start by running the included MWE, which compares the sparse Hessian from MOI.eval_hessian_lagrangian on MOI.Nonlinear.SparseReverseMode() with ForwardDiff.hessian, and check the entry H[4, 3] (about 1.2e-11 versus 1.2e-11 with a larger absolute error). The cause is the coloring-based Hessian recovery, not the derivative formulas. The maintainers have not chosen a fix among the three options (document, Double64 intermediates, or SparseMatrixColorings star coloring), so decide on the approach with them before writing code.

Scritto dal modello di indicizzazione a partire dal testo della issue.

Descrizione

I'm not sure this is actionable, but it also seems worth doing something about: maybe just documentation, but there are a couple of other options I'll detail below.

This came up while analyzing (with Claude's help) a standard benchmark problem, the CUTEst problem nondquar at n = 5:

(x1 - x2)^2 + (x4 - x5)^2 + Σ_{i=1}^{3} (x_i + x_{i+1} + x_5)^4

Here's the MWE to demonstrate the precision loss:

import MathOptInterface as MOI
import ForwardDiff

# MOI implementation
n = 5
x = [1.0, -1.0, 1.0, -1.0, 1e-6]
v = MOI.VariableIndex.(1:n)
obj = Expr(:call, :+, :(($(v[1]) - $(v[2]))^2), :(($(v[n-1]) - $(v[n]))^2),
           (:(($(v[i]) + $(v[i+1]) + $(v[n]))^4) for i in 1:n-2)...)
model = MOI.Nonlinear.Model()
MOI.Nonlinear.set_objective(model, obj)
ev = MOI.Nonlinear.Evaluator(model, MOI.Nonlinear.SparseReverseMode(), v)
MOI.initialize(ev, [:Hess, :HessVec])

st = MOI.hessian_lagrangian_structure(ev)
vals = zeros(length(st))
MOI.eval_hessian_lagrangian(ev, vals, x, 1.0, Float64[])
H = zeros(n, n)
for ((i, j), w) in zip(st, vals)
    H[i, j] += w
    i == j || (H[j, i] += w)
end

# ForwardDiff implementation
f(z) = (z[1] - z[2])^2 + (z[n-1] - z[n])^2 + sum((z[i] + z[i+1] + z[n])^4 for i in 1:n-2)
Hf = ForwardDiff.hessian(f, x)

Now compare the two Hessians:

julia> H - Hf
5×5 Matrix{Float64}:
 0.0   0.0           0.0         0.0         0.0
 0.0   4.44089e-16  -4.3416e-17  0.0         0.0
 0.0  -4.3416e-17    0.0         4.3416e-17  0.0
 0.0   0.0           4.3416e-17  0.0         0.0
 0.0   0.0           0.0         0.0         4.44089e-16

You might think everything is fine: errors are ~eps. But they are against a baseline of 1e-11:

julia> H[4, 3]
1.2000043416036534e-11

julia> Hf[4, 3]
1.2e-11

And that's a very large error indeed. At x = [1, -1, 1, -1, 1e-6] every inner sum equals 1e-6 exactly in floating point, so the cross partial ∂²f/∂x3∂x4 = 12·(1e-6)² = 1.2e-11; ForwardDiff's answer is the correct one.

It seems pretty clear this comes from the coloring, and because your coloring is both good and important the paths to fix this are narrow. I currently see three possible options:

  • don't fix, just document
  • support Double64, if the user requests it, for intermediate storage
  • support SparseMatrixColorings (xref #3806), which would allow one to use star coloring

Any thoughts on what you prefer? The documentation or Double64 might be something I could try; I'd probably defer to others for SparseMatrixColorings if they'd be willing to pitch in.

Lingua principale
Julia
Stelle
506
Fork
103
Merge medio
1g 10m
PR unite (30g)
12

Preparare l'ambiente

Questo progetto non fornisce container di sviluppo, Dockerfile né guida per i contributori, quindi l'ambiente è a tuo carico: parti dal suo README e consulta la nostra guida al primo contributo per i passaggi generali.

Come iniziare

  1. Leggi tutta la issue e poi la guida ai contributi del progetto.
  2. Commenta sulla issue per dire che te ne occupi tu — evita che due persone facciano lo stesso lavoro.
  3. Fai un fork del repository e lavora su un branch.
  4. Apri una pull request che faccia riferimento al numero della issue.

Altre issue di jump-dev/MathOptInterface.jl

Tutte le issue di jump-dev/MathOptInterface.jl

Issue simili

Altre issue su Julia

Ricevi le nuove issue nella tua casella

Un breve riepilogo di issue GitHub adatte ai principianti.