Sparse Matrix :
In computer programming, a matrix can be defined with a 2-dimensional array. Any array
with 'm' columns and 'n' rows represents a mXn matrix. There may be a situation in which
a matrix contains more number of ZERO values than NON-ZERO values. Such matrix is
known as sparse matrix.
When a sparse matrix is represented with 2-dimensional array, we waste lot of space to
represent that matrix. For example, consider a matrix of size 100 X 100 containing only
10 non-zero elements. In this matrix, only 10 spaces are filled with non-zero values and
remaining spaces of matrix are filled with zero. That means, totally we allocate 100 X 100
X 2 = 20000 bytes of space to store this integer matrix. And to access these 10 non-zero
elements we have to make scanning for 10000 times.
A sparse matrix can be represented by using TWO representations, those are as
follows...
Triplet Representation
Linked Representation
Triplet Representation
In this representation, we consider only non-zero values along with their row and column
index values. In this representation, the 0th row stores total rows, total columns and total
non-zero values in the matrix.For example, consider a matrix of size 5 X 6 containing 6
number of non-zero values. This matrix can be represented as shown in the image...
In above example matrix, there are only 6 non-zero elements ( those are 9, 8, 4, 2, 5 & 2)
and matrix size is 5 X 6. We represent this matrix as shown in the above image. Here the
first row in the right side table is filled with values 5, 6 & 6 which indicates that it is a
sparse matrix with 5 rows, 6 columns & 6 non-zero values. Second row is filled with 0, 4,
& 9 which indicates the value in the matrix at 0th row, 4th column is 9. In the same way
the remaining non-zero values also follows the similar pattern.
Linked Representation
In linked representation, we use linked list data structure to represent a sparse matrix. In
this linked list, we use two different nodes namely header node and element node.
Header node consists of three fields and element node consists of five fields as shown in
the image...
Consider the above same sparse matrix used in the Triplet representation. This sparse
matrix can be represented using linked representation as shown in the below image...
In above representation, H0, H1,...,H5 indicates the header nodes which are used to
represent indexes. Remaining nodes are used to represent non-zero elements in the
matrix, except the very first node which is used to represent abstract information of the
sparse matrix (i.e., It is a matrix of 5 X 6 with 6 non-zero elements).
In this representation, in each row and column, the last node right field points to it's
respective header node.
