The Forward Order Law for Least Squareg-Inverse of Multiple Matrix Products

Abstract

The generalized inverse has many important applications in the aspects of the theoretic research of matrices and statistics. One of the core problems of the generalized inverse is finding the necessary and sufficient conditions of the forward order laws for the generalized inverse of the matrix product. In this paper, by using the extremal ranks of the generalized Schur complement, we obtain some necessary and sufficient conditions for the forward order laws A 1 { 1 , 3 } A 2 { 1 , 3 } ⋯ A n { 1 , 3 } ⊆ ( A 1 A 2 ⋯ A n ) { 1 , 3 } and A 1 { 1 , 4 } A 2 { 1 , 4 } ⋯ A n { 1 , 4 } ⊆ ( A 1 A 2 ⋯ A n ) { 1 , 4 } .

Keywords

• forward order law
• generalized inverse
• maximal rank
• matrix product
• generalized Schur complement