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vectorized matrix list application in numpy

the problem i am trying to solve is as follows. I am given a matrix of arbitrary dimension representing indices of a list, and then a list. I would like to get back a matrix with the list elements swapped for the indices. I can't figure out how to do that in a vectorized way:
i.e if z = [[0,1], [1,0]] and list = [20,10], i'd want [[20,10], [10,20]] returned.

When they both are np.array, you can do indexing in a natural way:
import numpy as np
z = np.array([[0, 1], [1, 0]])
a = np.array([20, 10])
output = a[z]
print(output)
# [[20 10]
# [10 20]]

Swapping the dimensions of a numpy array using Ellipsis?

This code is swapping first and the last channels of an RBG image which is loaded into a Numpy array:
img = imread('image1.jpg')
# Convert from RGB -> BGR
img = img[..., [2, 1, 0]]
While I understand the use of Ellipsis for slicing in Numpy arrays, I couldn't understand the use of Ellipsis here. Could anybody explain what is exactly happening here?

tl;dr
img[..., [2, 1, 0]] produces the same result as taking the slices img[:, :, i] for each i in the index array [2, 1, 0], and then stacking the results along the last dimension of img. In other words:
img[..., [2,1,0]]
will produce the same output as:
np.stack([img[:,:,2], img[:,:,1], img[:,:,0]], axis=2)
The ellipsis ... is a placeholder that tells numpy which axis to apply the index array to. Without the ... the index array will be applied to the first axis of img instead of the last. Thus, without ..., the index statement:
img[[2,1,0]]
will produce the same output as:
np.stack([img[2,:,:], img[1,:,:], img[0,:,:]], axis=0)
What the docs say
This is an example of what the docs call "Combining advanced and basic indexing":
When there is at least one slice (:), ellipsis (...) or np.newaxis in the index (or the array has more dimensions than there are advanced indexes), then the behaviour can be more complicated. It is like concatenating the indexing result for each advanced index element.
It goes on to describe that in this
case, the dimensions from the advanced indexing operations [in your example [2, 1, 0]] are inserted into the result array at the same spot as they were in the initial array (the latter logic is what makes simple advanced indexing behave just like slicing).
The 2D case
The docs aren't the easiest to understand, but in this case it's not too hard to pick apart. Start with a simpler 2D case:
arr = np.arange(12).reshape(4,3)
array([[ 0, 1, 2],
[ 3, 4, 5],
[ 6, 7, 8],
[ 9, 10, 11]])
Using the same kind of advanced indexing with a single index value yields:
arr[:, [1]]
array([[ 1],
[ 4],
[ 7],
[10]])
which is the 1st column of arr. In other words, it's like you yielded all possible values from arr while holding the index of the last axis fixed. Like #hpaulj said in his comment, the ellipsis is there to act as a placeholder. It effectively tells numpy to iterate freely over all of the axes except for the last, to which the indexing array is applied.
You can use also this indexing syntax to shuffle the columns of arr around however you'd like:
arr[..., [1,0,2]]
array([[ 1, 0, 2],
[ 4, 3, 5],
[ 7, 6, 8],
[10, 9, 11]])
This is essentially the same operation as in your example, but on a 2D array instead of a 3D one.
You can explain what's going on with arr[..., [1,0,2]] by breaking it down to simpler indexing ops. It's kind of like you first take the return value of arr[..., [1]]:
array([[ 1],
[ 4],
[ 7],
[10]])
then the return value of arr[..., [0]]:
array([[0],
[3],
[6],
[9]])
then the return value of arr[..., [1]]:
array([[ 2],
[ 5],
[ 8],
[11]])
and then finally concatenated all of those results into a single array of shape (*arr.shape[:-1], len(ix)), where ix = [2, 0, 1] is the index array. The data along the last axis are ordered according to their order in ix.
One good way to understand exactly the ellipsis is doing is to perform the same op without it:
arr[[1,0,2]]
array([[6, 7, 8],
[0, 1, 2],
[3, 4, 5]])
In this case, the index array is applied to the first axis of arr, so the output is an array containing the [1,0,2] rows of arr. Adding an ... before the index array tells numpy to apply the index array to the last axis of arr instead.
Your 3D case
The case you asked about is the 3D equivalent of the 2D arr[..., [1,0,2]] example above. Say that img.shape is (480, 640, 3). You can think about img[..., [2, 1, 0]] as looping over each value i in ix=[2, 1, 0]. For every i, the indexing operation will gather the slab of shape (480, 640, 1) that lies along the ith index of the last axis of img. Once all three slabs are collected, the final result will be the equivalent of concatenating along their last axis (and in the order they were found).
notes
The only difference between arr[..., [1]] and arr[:,1] is that arr[..., [1]] preserves the shape of the data from the original array.
For a 2D array, arr[:, [1]] is equivalent to arr[..., [1]]. : acts as a placeholder just like ..., but only for a single dimension.

Tensorflow multiple scalar multiplication

I have a 3d Tensor with [batch_size,x,y] and a vector [batch_size].
I want to scalar multiply the i-th matrix [x,y] with the i-th entry of the given vector.
Is there a build in function in Tensorflow or do i have to use the tf.while_loop?

You can do this with broadcasting. You need to reshape the vector first.
a = tf.constant([[[1,1],[2,2]],[[3,3],[4,4]]])
b = tf.constant([2,3])
c = tf.reshape(b, [-1,1,1])
d = a * c
>>> sess.run(d)
array([[[ 2, 2],
[ 4, 4]],
[[ 9, 9],
[12, 12]]], dtype=int32)

I don't if there is built in function, but you also don't need to use while loop. You can do basic array manipulation. e.g.:
a=tf.random_uniform([3,5,8])
b=tf.random_uniform([3])
c=tf.expand_dims(tf.expand_dims(b, -1),1)
c=tf.tile(c,[1,5,8])
d=tf.multiply(a,c)
sess=tf.Session()
sess.run([a,b,c,d])
It should work.

Numpy: get 1D array as 2D array without reshape

I have need for hstacking multple arrays with with the same number of rows (although the number of rows is variable between uses) but different number of columns. However some of the arrays only have one column, eg.
array = np.array([1,2,3,4,5])
which gives
#array.shape = (5,)
but I'd like to have the shape recognized as a 2d array, eg.
#array.shape = (5,1)
So that hstack can actually combine them.
My current solution is:
array = np.atleast_2d([1,2,3,4,5]).T
#array.shape = (5,1)
So I was wondering, is there a better way to do this? Would
array = np.array([1,2,3,4,5]).reshape(len([1,2,3,4,5]), 1)
be better?
Note that my use of [1,2,3,4,5] is just a toy list to make the example concrete. In practice it will be a much larger list passed into a function as an argument. Thanks!

Check the code of hstack and vstack. One, or both of those, pass the arguments through atleast_nd. That is a perfectly acceptable way of reshaping an array.
Some other ways:
arr = np.array([1,2,3,4,5]).reshape(-1,1) # saves the use of len()
arr = np.array([1,2,3,4,5])[:,None] # adds a new dim at end
np.array([1,2,3],ndmin=2).T # used by column_stack
hstack and vstack transform their inputs with:
arrs = [atleast_1d(_m) for _m in tup]
[atleast_2d(_m) for _m in tup]
test data:
a1=np.arange(2)
a2=np.arange(10).reshape(2,5)
a3=np.arange(8).reshape(2,4)
np.hstack([a1.reshape(-1,1),a2,a3])
np.hstack([a1[:,None],a2,a3])
np.column_stack([a1,a2,a3])
result:
array([[0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 0, 1, 2, 3],
[1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 4, 5, 6, 7]])
If you don't know ahead of time which arrays are 1d, then column_stack is easiest to use. The others require a little function that tests for dimensionality before applying the reshaping.
Numpy: use reshape or newaxis to add dimensions

If I understand your intent correctly, you wish to convert an array of shape (N,) to an array of shape (N,1) so that you can apply np.hstack:
In [147]: np.hstack([np.atleast_2d([1,2,3,4,5]).T, np.atleast_2d([1,2,3,4,5]).T])
Out[147]:
array([[1, 1],
[2, 2],
[3, 3],
[4, 4],
[5, 5]])
In that case, you could use avoid reshaping the arrays and use np.column_stack instead:
In [151]: np.column_stack([[1,2,3,4,5], [1,2,3,4,5]])
Out[151]:
array([[1, 1],
[2, 2],
[3, 3],
[4, 4],
[5, 5]])

I followed Ludo's work and just changed the size of v from 5 to 10000. I ran the code on my PC and the result shows that atleast_2d seems to be a more efficient method in the larger scale case.
import numpy as np
import timeit
v = np.arange(10000)
print('atleast2d:',timeit.timeit(lambda:np.atleast_2d(v).T))
print('reshape:',timeit.timeit(lambda:np.array(v).reshape(-1,1))) # saves the use of len()
print('v[:,None]:', timeit.timeit(lambda:np.array(v)[:,None])) # adds a new dim at end
print('np.array(v,ndmin=2).T:', timeit.timeit(lambda:np.array(v,ndmin=2).T)) # used by column_stack
The result is:
atleast2d: 1.3809496470021259
reshape: 27.099974197000847
v[:,None]: 28.58291715100131
np.array(v,ndmin=2).T: 30.141663907001202
My suggestion is that use [:None] when dealing with a short vector and np.atleast_2d when your vector goes longer.

Just to add info on hpaulj's answer. I was curious about how fast were the four methods described. The winner is the method adding a column at the end of the 1d array.
Here is what I ran:
import numpy as np
import timeit
v = [1,2,3,4,5]
print('atleast2d:',timeit.timeit(lambda:np.atleast_2d(v).T))
print('reshape:',timeit.timeit(lambda:np.array(v).reshape(-1,1))) # saves the use of len()
print('v[:,None]:', timeit.timeit(lambda:np.array(v)[:,None])) # adds a new dim at end
print('np.array(v,ndmin=2).T:', timeit.timeit(lambda:np.array(v,ndmin=2).T)) # used by column_stack
And the results:
atleast2d: 4.455070924214851
reshape: 2.0535152913971615
v[:,None]: 1.8387219828073285
np.array(v,ndmin=2).T: 3.1735243063353664

Create matrix with 2 arrays in numpy

I want to find a command in numpy for a column vector times a row vector equals to a matrix
[1,1,1,1 ] ^T * [ 2,3 ] = [[2,3],[2,3],[2,3],[2,3]]

First, let's define your 1-D numpy arrays:
In [5]: one = np.array([ 1,1,1,1 ]); two = np.array([ 2,3 ])
Now, lets multiply them:
In [6]: one[:, np.newaxis] * two[np.newaxis, :]
Out[6]:
array([[2, 3],
[2, 3],
[2, 3],
[2, 3]])
This used numpy's newaxis to add the appropriate axes to get a 4x2 output matrix.

The problem you are encountering is that both of your vectors are neither column nor row vectors - they're just vectors. If you look at len(vec.shape) it's 1.
What you can do is use numpy.reshape to turn your column vector into shape (m, 1) and your row vector into shape (1, n).
import numpy as np
colu = np.reshape(u, (u.shape[0], 1))
rowv = np.reshape(v, (1, v.shape[0]))
Now when you multiply colu and rowv you'll get a matrix with shape (m, n).

If you need a matrix - use matrices. This way you can use your expression nearly verbatim:
np.matrix([1,1,1,1]).T * np.matrix([2,3])

You might want to use numpy.kron(a,b) it takes the Kronecker product of two arrays. You can see the b vector as a block. The function puts this block, multiplied by the corresponding coefficient of the a vector, on the position of that coefficient. You can also use it for matrices.
For your example it would look like:
import numpy as np
vecA = np.array([[1],[1],[1],[1]])
vecB = np.array([2,3])
Out = np.kron(vecA,vecB)
this returns
>>> Out
array([[2, 3],
[2, 3],
[2, 3],
[2, 3]])
Hope this helps you.