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In mathematics, the power iteration is an eigenvalue algorithm: given a matrix A, the algorithm will produce a number λ (theeigenvalue) and a nonzero vector v (the eigenvector), such that Av = λv.

The power iteration is a very simple algorithm. It does not compute a matrix decomposition, and hence it can be used when A is a very large sparse matrix. However, it will find only one eigenvalue (the one with the greatest absolute value) and it may converge only slowly.