Sparse matrices

• A Matrix in which the number of zero entries is much higher than the
number of non-zero entries is called a sparse matrix.
• A Sparse Matrix is used as it utilizes the memory space efficiently.
Types of sparse matrices
• There are three types of sparse matrices
• Lower triangular matrix-In this type of sparse matrix all the elements
above the main diagonal must have a zero value or in other words we
can say that all the elements below the main diagnostic should
contain non-zero elements only .This type of metric is called all lower
triangular matrix.
Upper triangular matrix
• In this type of sparse matrix all the elements above the main diagonal
should contain non-zero elements only, or in other words we can say
that all the elements below the main diagonal should have a zero
value. This type of Matrix is called an upper triangular matrix.
Tri- diagonal metrix
• In this type, elements with a non-zero value can appear only on the
diagonal or adjacent to the diagonal .This type of Matrix is a tri-
diagonal matrix.
Representation of sparse matrices
• There are two ways in which the sparse matrix can be represented,
which are:
• 1. Array Representation/3- Tuple Representation-
• This representation contains three rows in which the first row
represents the number of Rows, columns and non-zero entries/
values in the sparse matrix. Elements in the other rows give
information about the location and value of non-zero element.
• For example let us consider a sparse matrix.
Link Representation
• A sparse Matrix can also be represented in a linked way.In this
representation we store the number of rows, columns and non-zero
entries in a single node and there is a pointer which points to the next
location. example:
Sparse Matrix: lower triangular matrix