In
numerical linear algebra, the
Gauss–Seidel method, also known as the
Liebmann method or the
method of successive displacement, is an
iterative method used to solve a
linear system of equations. It is named after the
German mathematicians Carl Friedrich Gauss and
Philipp Ludwig von Seidel, and is similar to the
Jacobi method. Though it can be applied to any matrix with non-zero elements on the diagonals, convergence is guaranteed if the matrix is either
diagonally dominant, or symmetric and
positive definite.
Description
Given a square system of
n linear equations with unknown
x:
where:
Then
A can be decomposed into
a lower triangular component L*, and
a strictly upper triangular component U:
The system of linear equations may be rewritten as:
The Gauss–Seidel method is an
iterative technique that solves the left hand side of this expression for
x, using previous value for
x on the right hand side. Analytically, this may be written as:
However, by taking advantage of the triangular form of
L*, the elements of
x(k+1) can be computed sequentially using
forward substitution:
Note that the sum inside this computation of
xi(k+1) requires each element in
x(k) except
xi(k) itself.
The procedure is generally continued until the changes made by an iteration are below some tolerance.
Discussion
The element-wise formula for the Gauss–Seidel method is extremely similar to that of the
Jacobi method.
The computation of xi(k+1) uses only the elements of x(k+1) that have already been computed, and only the elements of x(k) that have yet to be advanced to iteration k+1. This means that, unlike the Jacobi method, only one storage vector is required as elements can be overwritten as they are computed, which can be advantageous for very large problems.
However, unlike the Jacobi method, the computations for each element cannot be done in parallel.[citation needed] Furthermore, the values at each iteration are dependent on the order of the original equations.
Convergence
The convergence properties of the Gauss–Seidel method are dependent on the matrix
A. Namely,
the procedure is known to converge if either:
The Gauss–Seidel method sometimes converges even if these conditions are not satisfied.
Algorithm
Inputs:
A ,
b
Output:
φ
Choose an initial guess
φ(0) to the solution
repeat until convergence
- for i from 1 until n do
- for j from 1 until i − 1 do
- end (j-loop)
- for j from i + 1 until n do
- end (j-loop)
- end (i-loop)
- check if convergence is reached
end (repeat)
Gauss-Seidel is the same as
SOR (successive over-relaxation) with
ω = 1.
Examples
An example for the matrix version
A linear system shown as

is given by:
and
We want to use the equation
in the form
where:
and
We must decompose

into the sum of a lower triangular component

and a strict upper triangular component

:
and
The inverse of

is:
.
Now we can find:
Now we have

and

and we can use them to obtain the vectors

iteratively.
First of all, we have to choose

: we can only guess. The better the guess, the quicker will perform the algorithm.
We suppose:
We can then calculate:
As expected, the algorithm converges to the exact solution:
In fact, the matrix A is diagonally dominant (but not positive definite).
Another example for the matrix version
Another linear system shown as

is given by:
and
We want to use the equation
in the form
where:
and
We must decompose

into the sum of a lower triangular component

and a strict upper triangular component

:
and
The inverse of

is:
.
Now we can find:
Now we have

and

and we can use them to obtain the vectors

iteratively.
First of all, we have to choose

: we can only guess. The better the guess, the quicker will perform the algorithm.
We suppose:
We can then calculate:
If we test for convergence we'll find that the algorithm diverges. In fact, the matrix A is neither diagonally dominant nor positive definite. Then, convergency to the exact solution
is not guaranteed and, in this case, will not occur.
An example for the equation version
Suppose given
k equations where
xn are vectors of these equations and starting point
x0. From the first equation solve for
x1 in terms of

For the next equations substitute the previous values of
xs.
To make it clear let's consider an example.
Solving for
x1,
x2,
x3 and
x4 gives:
Suppose we choose (0, 0, 0, 0) as the initial approximation, then the first approximate solution is given by
Using the approximations obtained, the iterative procedure is repeated until the desired accuracy has been reached. The following are the approximated solutions after four iterations.
x1 | x2 | x3 | x4 |
0.6 | 2.32727 | − 0.987273 | 0.878864 |
1.03018 | 2.03694 | − 1.01446 | 0.984341 |
1.00659 | 2.00356 | − 1.00253 | 0.998351 |
1.00086 | 2.0003 | − 1.00031 | 0.99985 |
The exact solution of the system is (1, 2, −1, 1).
See also
References
This article incorporates text from the article
Gauss-Seidel_method on
CFD-Wiki that is under the
GFDL license.
External links