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Make function values in root finding algorithms accessible


From: Christian Krueger
Subject: Make function values in root finding algorithms accessible
Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 18:32:12 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.7.0

Hi,

I am using the root finding algorithms (mainly brent), and I realized that it's not possible (at least not straightforwardly intended)
1) to provide function values when initializing the root solver or
2) to retrieve the function values at x_lower and x_upper after an iteration
directly from the methods.

I attach a patch (as a diff to commit e38f2146) which implements the first of those two things I mentioned. Basically, besides the existing function gsl_root_fsolver_set(...) it provides another such function gsl_root_fsolver_set2(..., f_lower, f_upper) which allows to also provide the function values at x_lower and x_upper and in return skips the function evaluation in the initialization routine.

I don't think there is another way to implement this because my main intention is to get rid of the two (in my case costly) function evaluations.

Explanation why I want this:
Evaluating my function f(x), of which I want to find a root, takes a few minutes time (here, f(x) is a characteristic value of the solution of an elliptic PDE). Furthermore, I don't know a priori what a good choice of x_lower and x_upper is. I have to iterate first through some generic interval before I can start the Brent search; this means that I have already calculated f(x_lower) and f(x_upper). The Brent initialization would calculate those values again and waste a few minutes time.

In the same way, I will write a patch that allows me to access the function value at the end of the Brent iteration, rather than evaluating f(x) yet another time. In the end, those changes would allow me to save 20% - 30% computational time.

If this patch is any interesting, I'm happy for it to be implemented in GSL and I'm also happy to make changes (e.g. a nicer name as *set2() is not very inventive or do the same for the fdfsolver methods) beforehand.

Christian

Attachment: gsl_root_fsolver_set2.patch
Description: Text document

Attachment: OpenPGP_0x5D5587E0B7C49590.asc
Description: application/pgp-keys

Attachment: OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


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