A sparse matrix is one where most of its elements are zero. There is no precise definition as to know whether a matrix is sparsed or not, but it is a concept which we all can recognize intuitively. The natural method of representing matrices in memory as two-dimensional arrays may not be suitable for sparse matrices. That is one may save space by storing only those entries which may be nonzero. If this is done, then the matrix may be thought of as an ordered list of non-zero elements only. Information about a non-zero element has three parts:
an integer representing its row,
an integer representing its column and
the data associated with this element.
That is, each element of a matrix is uniquely characterized by its row and column position, say i, j. We might store that matrix as a list of 3-tuples of the form (i, j, data), as shown below,
Although the non-zero elements may be stored in the array in any order, keeping them ordered in some fashion may be advantageous for further processing. Note that above array is arranged in increasing order of the row number of non-zero elements. Moreover, for elements in the same row number, the array is arranged in order of increasing column number.
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