A Note on a Paper by P. Amodio and F. Mazzia

In 1999 Amodio and Mazzia presented a new backward error analysis for LU factorization and introduced a new growth factor _n. Their very interesting approach allowed them to obtain sharp error bounds. In particular, they derive nice results assuming that partial pivoting is used. However, the forward error bound for the solution of a linear system whose coefficient matrix A is an M-atrix given in Theorem 4.1 of that paper is not correct. They first obtain a bound for the condition number (U) assuming that one has the LU factorization of an M-matrix and then they apply the bounds obtained when partial pivoting is used. But if P is the permutation associated with partial pivoting then PA = LU can fail to be an M-atrix and the bound for (U) can be false, as shown in our Example 1.1. We also prove that, for a pivoting strategy presented in the paper, the growth factor of an M-matrix A is _n(A) = 1 and (U) (A), where U is the upper triangular matrix obtained after applying such a pivoting strategy.This revised version was published online in October 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.