Sparse representations of matrices are useful because they do not store every element. If one particular value appears very frequently it can be very advantageous to use a sparse representation. Mathematica offers a sparse representation for matrices, vectors, and tensors with SparseArray.
This chapter discusses how to create and work with SparseArray objects in Mathematica. If you are interested in carrying out linear algebra computations on sparse matrices, you should consult the section Matrix Computations.
