QR Decomposition - Column Pivoting

Column Pivoting

QR decomposition with column pivoting introduces a permutation matrix P:

Column pivoting is useful when A is (nearly) rank deficient, or is suspected of being so. It can also improve numerical accuracy. P is usually chosen so that the diagonal elements of R are non-increasing: . This can be used to find the (numerical) rank of A at lower computational cost than a singular value decomposition, forming the basis of so-called rank-revealing QR algorithms.