On the RAS-algorithm

Given a nonnegative real (m, n) matrixA and positive vectorsu, v, then the biproportional constrained matrix problem is to find a nonnegative (m, n) matrixB such thatB=diag (x) A diag (y) holds for some vectorsx ∈ ? ^m andy ∈ ? ⁿ and the row (column) sums ofB equalu _i (v _j )i=1,...,m(j=1,..., n). A solution procedure (called the RAS-method) was proposed by Bacharach 1] to solve this problem. The main disadvantage of this algorithm is, that round-off errors slow down the convergence. Here we present a modified RAS-method which together with several other improvements overcomes this disadvantage.