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i really wish people would stop calling multidimensional arrays tensors. there is already well defined language for this. multidimensional array is fine, psued
by jheriko 11y ago
i really wish people would stop calling multidimensional arrays tensors.
there is already well defined language for this. multidimensional array is fine, psuedotensor is fine. tensor is confusing if you have any previous background with tensor calculus before the word became machine learning flavour of the month.
still. this does look pretty cool overall. processing large volumes of data is becoming increasingly less specialised and more generic, which can only be good. :)
- xyzzyz 11y agoI'd say tensor is exactly as confusing as vector -- vectors are just elements of some vector spaces, and you get a list of numbers by choosing a basis of that vector space. Similarly, tensors are just elements of a tensor product of some vector spaces (or modules), and you get a multidimensional array by choosing bases in the factors.
- cmarschner 11y agoCan't agree more. The first time I looked up tensors when they appeared in Torch I got totally confused by the description of tensors used in physics.
- jordigh 11y agoThe problem is complicated a bit more because physicists use the word "tensor" to mean a tensor field, i.e. a collection of tensors on which calculus makes sense.
- zer0nes 11y agoTensor is a much better term than multidimensional array: - It's not as verbose - The concept of tensor has linear algebra operations associated with it while multidimensional array is just a programming term without any attached Math operations.
- jordigh 11y ago> The concept of tensor has linear algebra operations associated with it while multidimensional array is just a programming term without any attached Math operations. But that's the precise problem. The multidimensional arrays that programmers call "tensors" do not generally have the operations defined on them that you would expect from a tensor, such as index contraction, tensor products, or differentiation. At the same time, a tensor is different from an array, just like a number is different from its decimal representation. These distinctions are important when you want to change the basis, a very useful and frequent operation for both tensors and numbers. Then again, this battle was already fought and lost for vectors, which programmers specialised to mean "arrays" instead of meaning "elements of a linear space".
- jheriko 11y agotrue, and pseudotensor can be a mouthful too, but its still confusing.