This survey provides an overview of higher-order tensor decompositions, their applications, and available software. A tensor is a multidimensional or N -way array. Decompositions of higher-order tensors (i.e., N -way arrays with N ≥ 3) have applications in psychometrics, chemometrics, signal processing, numerical linear algebra, computer vision, numerical analysis, data mining, neuroscience, graph analysis, etc. Two particular tensor decompositions can be considered to be higher-order extensions of the matrix singular value decompo- sition: CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) decomposes a tensor as a sum of rank-one tensors, and the Tucker decomposition is a higher-order form of principal components analysis. There are many other tensor decompositions, including INDSCAL, PARAFAC2, CANDELINC, DEDICOM, and PARATUCK2 as well as nonnegative variants of all of the above. The N-way Toolbox and Tensor Toolbox, both for MATLAB, and the Multilinear Engine are examples of software packages for working with tensors.

Abstract. We survey results in algebraic complexity theory, focusing on matrix multiplication. Our goals are (i) to show how open questions in algebraic complexity theory are naturally posed as questions in geometry and representation theory, (ii) to motivate researchers to work on these questions, and (iii) to point out relations with more general problems in geometry. The key geometric objects for our study are the secant varieties of Segre varieties. We explain how these varieties are also useful for algebraic statistics, the study of phylogenetic invariants, and quantum computing.

One of the leading problems of algebraic complexity theory is matrix multiplication. The naïve multiplication of two n × n matrices uses n 3 multiplications. In 1969, Strassen [20] presented an explicit algorithm for multiplying 2 × 2 matrices using seven multiplications. In the opposite direction, Hopcroft and Kerr [12] and

Abstract. There has been continued interest in seeking a theorem describing optimal low-rank approximations to tensors of order 3 or higher, that parallels the Eckart–Young theorem for matrices. In this paper, we argue that the naive approach to this problem is doomed to failure because, unlike matrices, tensors of order 3 or higher can fail to have best rank-r approximations. The phenomenon is much more widespread than one might suspect: examples of this failure can be constructed over a wide range of dimensions, orders and ranks, regardless of the choice of norm (or even Brègman divergence). Moreover, we show that in many instances these counterexamples have positive volume: they cannot be regarded as isolated phenomena. In one extreme case, we exhibit a tensor space in which no rank-3 tensor has an optimal rank-2 approximation. The notable exceptions to this misbehavior are rank-1 tensors and order-2 tensors (i.e. matrices). In a more positive spirit, we propose a natural way of overcoming the ill-posedness of the low-rank approximation problem, by using weak solutions when true solutions do not exist. For this to work, it is necessary to characterize the set of weak solutions, and we do this in the case of rank 2, order 3 (in arbitrary dimensions). In our work we emphasize the importance of closely studying concrete low-dimensional examples as a first step towards more general results. To this end, we present a detailed analysis of equivalence classes of 2 × 2 × 2 tensors, and we develop methods for extending results upwards to higher orders and dimensions. Finally, we link our work to existing studies of tensors from an algebraic geometric point of view. The rank of a tensor can in theory be given a semialgebraic description; in other words, can be determined by a system of polynomial inequalities. We study some of these polynomials in cases of interest to us; in particular we make extensive use of the hyperdeterminant ∆ on R 2×2×2.

One of the leading problems of algebraic complexity theory is matrix multiplication. The naïve multiplication of two n × n matrices uses n 3 multiplications. In 1969 Strassen [20] presented an explicit algorithm for multiplying 2 × 2 matrices using seven multiplications. In the opposite direction, Hopcroft and Kerr [12] and Winograd [22] proved independently that there is no