diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/linalg/sparsesvd.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/linalg/sparsesvd.scala
index 2c82c6b958..2198e6a1a2 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/linalg/sparsesvd.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/linalg/sparsesvd.scala
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ object SVD {
     }
 
     if (min_svalue < 1.0e-8) {
-      throw new IllegalArgumentException("Minimum singular value requested must be greater than 1e-9")
+      throw new IllegalArgumentException("Minimum singular value requested is too small")
     }
 
     // Compute A^T A, assuming rows are sparse enough to fit in memory