In mathematics, Tucker decomposition decomposes a tensor into a set of matrices and one small core tensor. It is named after Ledyard R. Tucker although it goes back to Hitchcock in 1927. Initially described as a three-mode extension of factor analysis and principal component analysis it may actually be generalized to higher mode analysis, which is also called higher-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) or the M-mode SVD. The algorithm to which the literature typically refers when discussing the Tucker decomposition or the HOSVD is the M-mode SVD algorithm introduced by Vasilescu and Terzopoulos, but misattributed to Tucker or De Lathauwer etal.

It may be regarded as a more flexible PARAFAC (parallel factor analysis) model. In PARAFAC the core tensor is restricted to be "diagonal".

In practice, Tucker decomposition is used as a modelling tool. For instance, it is used to model three-way (or higher way) data by means of relatively small numbers of components for each of the three or more modes, and the components are linked to each other by a three- (or higher-) way core array. The model parameters are estimated in such a way that, given fixed numbers of components, the modelled data optimally resemble the actual data in the least squares sense. The model gives a summary of the information in the data, in the same way as principal components analysis does for two-way data.

is the core tensor, which are defined as the Frobenius norm respectively. The k-mode product (k with entries as

Altogether, the decomposition may also be written more directly as

, which can be effective when the difference in dimension sizes is large.

There are two special cases of Tucker decomposition:

Tucker1

Tucker2 .

RESCAL decomposition .

See also

• Higher-order singular value decomposition

• Multilinear principal component analysis

References