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Computation difference between function and manual computation

I am facing a mystery right now. I get strange results in some program and I think it may be related to the computation since I got different results with my functions compared to manual computation.
This is from my program, I am printing the values pre-computation :
print("\nPrecomputation:\nmatrix\n:", matrix)
tmp = likelihood_left * likelihood_right
print("\nconditional_dep:", tmp)
print("\nfinal result:", matrix # tmp)
I got the following output:
Precomputation:
matrix:
[array([0.08078721, 0.5802404 , 0.16957052, 0.09629893, 0.07310294])
array([0.14633129, 0.45458744, 0.20096238, 0.02142105, 0.17669784])
array([0.41198731, 0.06197812, 0.05934063, 0.23325626, 0.23343768])
array([0.15686545, 0.29516415, 0.20095091, 0.14720275, 0.19981674])
array([0.15965914, 0.18383683, 0.10606946, 0.14234812, 0.40808645])]
conditional_dep: [0.01391123 0.01388155 0.17221067 0.02675524 0.01033257]
final result: [0.07995043 0.03485223 0.02184015 0.04721548 0.05323298]
The thing is when I compute the following code:
matrix = [np.array([0.08078721, 0.5802404 , 0.16957052, 0.09629893, 0.07310294]),
np.array([0.14633129, 0.45458744, 0.20096238, 0.02142105, 0.17669784]),
np.array([0.41198731, 0.06197812, 0.05934063, 0.23325626, 0.23343768]),
np.array([0.15686545, 0.29516415, 0.20095091, 0.14720275, 0.19981674]),
np.array([0.15965914, 0.18383683, 0.10606946, 0.14234812, 0.40808645])]
tmp = np.asarray([0.01391123, 0.01388155, 0.17221067, 0.02675524, 0.01033257])
matrix # tmp
The values in use are exactly the same as they should be in the computation before but I get the following result:
array([0.04171218, 0.04535276, 0.02546353, 0.04688848, 0.03106443])
This result is then obviously different than the previous one and is the true one (I computed the dot product by hand).
I have been facing this problem the whole day and I did not find anything useful online. If any of you have any even tiny idea where it can come from I'd be really happy :D
Thank's in advance
Yann
PS: I can show more of the code if needed.
PS2: I don't know if it is relevant but this is used in a dynamic programming algorithm.

To recap our discussion in the comments, in the first part ("pre-computation"), the following is true about the matrix object:
>>> matrix.shape
(5,)
>>> matrix.dtype
dtype('O') # aka object
And as you say, this is due to matrix being a slice of a larger, non-uniform array. Let's recreate this situation:
>>> matrix = np.array([[], np.array([0.08078721, 0.5802404 , 0.16957052, 0.09629893, 0.07310294]), np.array([0.14633129, 0.45458744, 0.20096238, 0.02142105, 0.17669784]), np.array([0.41198731, 0.06197812, 0.05934063, 0.23325626, 0.23343768]), np.array([0.15686545, 0.29516415, 0.20095091, 0.14720275, 0.19981674]), np.array([0.15965914, 0.18383683, 0.10606946, 0.14234812, 0.40808645])])[1:]
It is now not a matrix with scalars in rows and columns, but a column vector of column vectors. Technically, matrix # tmp is an operation between two 1-D arrays and hence NumPy should, according to the documentation, calculate the inner product of the two. This is true in this case, with the convention that the sum be over the first axis:
>>> np.array([matrix[i] * tmp[i] for i in range(5)]).sum(axis=0)
array([0.07995043, 0.03485222, 0.02184015, 0.04721548, 0.05323298])
>>> matrix # tmp
array([0.07995043, 0.03485222, 0.02184015, 0.04721548, 0.05323298])
This is essentially the same as taking the transpose of the proper 2-D matrix before the multiplication:
>>> np.stack(matrix).T # tmp
array([0.07995043, 0.03485222, 0.02184015, 0.04721548, 0.05323298])
Equivalently, as noted by #jirasssimok:
>>> tmp # np.stack(matrix)
array([0.07995043, 0.03485222, 0.02184015, 0.04721548, 0.05323298])
Hence the erroneous or unexpected result.
As you have already resolved to do in the comments, this can be avoided in the future by ensuring all matrices are proper 2-D arrays.

It looks like you got the operands switched in one of your matrix multiplications.
Using the same values of matrix and tmp that you provided, matrix # tmp and tmp # matrix provide the two results you showed.1
matrix = [np.array([0.08078721, 0.5802404 , 0.16957052, 0.09629893, 0.07310294]),
np.array([0.14633129, 0.45458744, 0.20096238, 0.02142105, 0.17669784]),
np.array([0.41198731, 0.06197812, 0.05934063, 0.23325626, 0.23343768]),
np.array([0.15686545, 0.29516415, 0.20095091, 0.14720275, 0.19981674]),
np.array([0.15965914, 0.18383683, 0.10606946, 0.14234812, 0.40808645])]
tmp = np.asarray([0.01391123, 0.01388155, 0.17221067, 0.02675524, 0.01033257])
print(matrix # tmp) # [0.04171218 0.04535276 0.02546353 0.04688848 0.03106443]
print(tmp # matrix) # [0.07995043 0.03485222 0.02184015 0.04721548 0.05323298]
To make it a little more obvious what your code is doing, you might also consider using np.dot instead of #. If you pass matrix as the first argument and tmp as the second, it will have the result you want, and make it more clear that you're conceptually calculating dot products rather than multiplying matrices.
As an additional note, if you're performing matrix operations on matrix, it might be better if it was a single two-dimensional array instead of a list of 1-dimensional arrays. this will prevent errors of the sort you'll see right now if you try to run matrix # matrix. This would also let you say matrix.dot(tmp) instead of np.dot(matrix, tmp) if you wanted to.
(I'd guess that you can use np.stack or a similar function to create matrix, or you can call np.stack on matrix after creating it.)
1 Because tmp has only one dimension and matrix has two, NumPy can and will treat tmp as whichever type of vector makes the multiplication work (using broadcasting). So tmp is treated as a column vector in matrix # tmp and a row vector in tmp # matrix.

Python matrix multiplication 3d Array

I tried to solve a PDE numerically and in the course of this I faced the problem of a triple-nested for loop resembling the 3 spatial dimension. This construct is nested in another time loop, so you can imagine that the computing takes forever for sufficient large node numbers. The code block looks like this
for jy in range(0,cy-1):
for jx in range(0,cx-1):
for jz in range(0,cz-1):
T[n+1,jx,jy,jz] = T[n,jx,jy,jz] + s*(T[n,jx-1,jy,jz] - 2*T[n,jx,jy,jz] + T[n,jx+1,jy,jz]) + s*(T[n,jx,jy-1,jz] - 2*T[n,jx,jy,jz] + T[n,jx,jy+1,jz]) + s*(T[n,jx,jy,jz-1] - 2*T[n,jx,jy,jz] + T[n,jx,jy,jz+1])
It might look intimidating at first, but is quite easy. I have a 3 dimensional matrix representing a solid bulk material, where each point represents the current temperature. The iteratively calculated next temperature at each point is calculated taking into account each point next to that point - so 6 in total. In the case of a 1-dimensional solid the solution is just a simple matrix multiplication. Is there any chance to represent the 3-loop-system above in a simple matrix solution like in the 1D case?
Best regards!

With numpy you can easily do these kinds of matrix operations,
e.g for a 3x3 matrix
import numpy as np
T = np.random.random((3,3,3))
T = T*T - 2*T ... etc.

First off, you need to be a bit more careful with your terminology. A "matrix" is a 2-Dimensional array of numbers. So you are really talking about an array. Numpy, or better yet Scipy, has an data type called an ndarray. You need to be very careful manipulating them, because although they are sometimes used to represent matrices, there are operations that can be performed on 2-D arrays that are not mathematically legal for matrices.
I strongly recommend you use # and not * to perform multiplication of 1- or 2-D matrices, and be sure to add code to check that the operations you are doing are legal mathematically. As a trivial example, Python lets you add a 1 x n or an n x 1 vector to an n x n matrix, even though that is not mathematically correct. The reason it allows it is, as intimated above, because there is no true matrix type in Python.
It very well may be that you can reformulate your problem to use a 3-D array, and by experimentation find the particular operation you are trying to perform. Just keep in mind that the rules of linear algebra are only casually applied in Python.

NumPy: Compute mode row-wise spanning over multiple arrays from iterator

Have a look at this image:
In my application I receive from an iterator an arbitrary amount (let's say 1000 for now) of big 1-dimensional arrays arr1, arr2, arr3, ..., arr1000 (10000 entries each). Each entry is an integer between 0 and n, where in this case n = 9. My ultimate goal is to compute a 1-dimensional array result such that result[i] == the mode of arr1[i], arr2[i], arr3[i], ..., arr1000[i].
However, it is not tractable to concatenate the arrays to one big matrix and then compute the mode row-wise, since this may exceed the RAM on my machine.
An alternative would be to set up an array res2 of shape (10000, 10), then loop through every array, use each entry e as index and then to increase the value of res2[i][e] by 1. Alter looping, I would apply something like argmax. However, this is too slow.
So: Is the a way to perform the task in a fast way, maybe by using NumPy's advanced indexing?
EDIT (due to the comments):
This is basically the code which calculates the modes row-wise – avoiding to concatenate the arrays:
def foo(length, n):
counts = np.zeros((length, n), dtype=np.int_)
for arr in array_iterator():
i = 0
for e in arr:
counts[i][e] += 1
i += 1
return np.argmax(counts, axis=1)
It takes already 60 seconds for 100 arrays of size 10000 (although there is more work done behind the scenes, which results into that time – however, this work scales linearly with the amount of arrays).
Regarding the real sizes:
The amount of different arrays is really arbitrary. It's a parameter of experiments and I'd like to have the opportunity even to set this to values like 10^6. The length of each array is depending of my data set I'm working with. This could be 10000, or 100000 or even worse. However – spitting this into smaller pieces may be possible, though annoying.
My free RAM for this task is about 4 GB.
EDIT 2:
The running time I gave above leads to a wrong impression. Actually, the running time which just belongs to the inner loop (for e in arr) in the above mentioned scenario is just 5 seconds – which is now ok for me, since it's negligible compared to the remaining running time. I will leave this question open anyway for a moment, since there might be an even faster method waiting out there.

Fast way to construct a matrix in Python

I have been browsing through the questions, and could find some help, but I prefer having confirmation by asking it directly. So here is my problem.
I have an (numpy) array u of dimension N, from which I want to build a square matrix k of dimension N^2. Basically, each matrix element k(i,j) is defined as k(i,j)=exp(-|u_i-u_j|^2).
My first naive way to do it was like this, which is, I believe, Fortran-like:
for i in range(N):
for j in range(N):
k[i][j]=np.exp(np.sum(-(u[i]-u[j])**2))
However, this is extremely slow. For N=1000, for example, it is taking around 15 seconds.
My other way to proceed is the following (inspired by other questions/answers):
i, j = np.ogrid[:N,:N]
k = np.exp(np.sum(-(u[i]-u[j])**2,axis=2))
This is way faster, as for N=1000, the result is almost instantaneous.
So I have two questions.
1) Why is the first method so slow, and why is the second one so fast ?
2) Is there a faster way to do it ? For N=10000, it is starting to take quite some time already, so I really don't know if this was the "right" way to do it.
Thank you in advance !
P.S: the matrix is symmetric, so there must also be a way to make the process faster by calculating only the upper half of the matrix, but my question was more related to the way to manipulate arrays, etc.

First, a small remark, there is no need to use np.sum if u can be re-written as u = np.arange(N). Which seems to be the case since you wrote that it is of dimension N.
1) First question:
Accessing indices in Python is slow, so best is to not use [] if there is a way to not use it. Plus you call multiple times np.exp and np.sum, whereas they can be called for vectors and matrices. So, your second proposal is better since you compute your k all in once, instead of elements by elements.
2) Second question:
Yes there is. You should consider using only numpy functions and not using indices (around 3 times faster):
k = np.exp(-np.power(np.subtract.outer(u,u),2))
(NB: You can keep **2 instead of np.power, which is a bit faster but has smaller precision)
edit (Take into account that u is an array of tuples)
With tuple data, it's a bit more complicated:
ma = np.subtract.outer(u[:,0],u[:,0])**2
mb = np.subtract.outer(u[:,1],u[:,1])**2
k = np.exp(-np.add(ma, mb))
You'll have to use twice np.substract.outer since it will return a 4 dimensions array if you do it in one time (and compute lots of useless data), whereas u[i]-u[j] returns a 3 dimensions array.
I used np.add instead of np.sum since it keep the array dimensions.
NB: I checked with
N = 10000
u = np.random.random_sample((N,2))
I returns the same as your proposals. (But 1.7 times faster)

Scipy LinearOperator With Multiple Inputs

I need to invert a large, dense matrix which I hoped to use Scipy's gmres to do. Fortunately, the dense matrix A follows a pattern and I do not need to store the matrix in memory. The LinearOperator class allows us to construct an object which acts as the matrix for GMRES and can compute directly the matrix vector product A*v. That is, we write a function mv(v) which takes as input a vector v and returns mv(v) = A*v. Then, we can use the LinearOperator class to create A_LinOp = LinearOperator(shape = shape, matvec = mv). We can put the linear operator into the Scipy gmres command to evaluate the matrix vector products without ever having to fully load A into memory.
The documentation for the LinearOperator is found here: LinearOperator Documentation.
Here is my problem: to write the routine to compute the matrix vector product mv(v) = A*v, I need another input vector C. The entries in A are of the form A[i,j] = f(C[i] - C[j]). So, what I really want is for mv to be of two inputs, one fixed vector input C, and one variable input v which we want to compute A*v.
MATLAB has a similar setup, where would write x = gmres(#(v) mv(v,C),b) where b is the right hand side of the problem Ax = b, , and mv is the function that takes as variable input v which we want to compute A*v and C is the fixed, known vector which we need for the assembly of A.
My problem is that I can't figure out how to allow the LinearOperator class to accept two inputs, one variable and one "fixed" like I can in MATLAB.
Is there a way to do the analogous operation in SciPy? Alternatively, if anyone knows of a better way of inverting a large, dense matrix (50000, 50000) where the entries follow a pattern, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks!
EDIT: I should have stated this information actually. The matrix is actually (in block form) [A C; C^T 0], where A is N x N (N large) and C is N x 3, and the 0 is 3 x 3 and C^T is the transpose of C. This array C is the same array as the one mentioned above. The entries of A follow a pattern A[i,j] = f(C[i] - C[j]).
I wrote mv(v,C) to go row by row construct A*v[i] for i=0,N, by computing sum f(C[i]-C[j)*v[j] (actually, I do numpy.dot(FC,v) where FC[j] = f(C[i]-C[j]) which works well). Then, at the end doing the computations for the C^T rows. I was hoping to eventually replace the large for loop with a multiprocessing call to parallelize the for loop, but that's a future thing to consider. I will also look into using Cython to speed up the computations.

This is very late, but if you're still interested...
Your A matrix must be very low rank since it's a nonlinearly transformed version of a rank-2 matrix. Plus it's symmetric. That means it's trivial to inverse: get the truncated eigenvalue decompostion with, say, 5 eigenvalues: A = U*S*U', then invert that: A^-1 = U*S^-1*U'. S is diagonal so this is inexpensive. You can get the truncated eigenvalue decomposition with eigh.
That takes care of A. Then for the rest: use the block matrix inversion formula. Looks nasty, but I will bet you 100,000,000 prussian francs that it's 50x faster than the direct method you were using.

I faced the same situation (some years later than you) of trying to use more than one argument to LinearOperator, but for another problem. The solution I found was the use of global variables, to avoid passing the variables as arguments to the function.