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 | 
| (1) | 
| (2) | 
| (3) | 
| (a) | It is a correlation matrix, i.e., symmetric positive semidefinite matrix with a unit diagonal. This is achieved by the way  is assembled and by a linear matrix inequality | ||
| (b) | is nearest to  in the Frobenius norm, i.e., it minimizes the Frobenius norm of the difference which is equivalent to: | ||
| (c) | preserves the nonzero structure of . This is met by defining only for nonzero elements . |