3 ms·

Not really. For starters not all the vectors in the database are of the same dimension (at least in ones I've used). You can for example in pgvector have mult

Not really. For starters not all the vectors in the database are of the same dimension (at least in ones I've used). You can for example in pgvector have multiple tables with a column of vector type and those tables can have different cardinality. In any case your description is strangely reductionist. The important thing about a vector db is that is typically designed to store embeddings used in various ML applications. So say you are doing NLP you can tokenize some input and then store the token and positional embeddings in a vector db and then use it for similarity search, training etc.

defrost 4y ago
Mixed tables each with reduced cardinalities makes sense. > your description is strangely reductionist. Sure - pure | applied math background, old enough to have used Postgres when it was known as Ingres, to have patched in Spatial relations before it had the GIS functions it has now, and to have written libraries for GIS linked { 256 | 1024 | 2048 } D vector databases for signal aquisition | processing. I'm late to the 'modern' discussions & just checking my read - I can think of applications for mixed dimensions and discrete space vectors and there are analogs to trad R^N ops for those cases.
- tudorw 4y ago
  i think it might be a n-dimensional topological manifold with a nth dimensional geodesic supplying the shortest path, anyone actually done topology?
  - tudorw 4y ago
    if you take a 2d piece of paper, draw the numbers 1 to 5 horizontally, then look at the distance between 1 and 5, or 1 and 3, they vary, now roll it into as cylinder, it's a manifold, and now the distance between 1 and 5 and 1 and 1 and 3 are the same, no matter how many numbers you had written on the paper, they would be connected by the shortest path, something like a helix I believe, the helix being the geodesic, now, increase the dimension, but keep rolling it up into that 'cylinder' and using a new geodesic to connect the shortest path, this is my layman's take on it, if you are #math please jump in and put me right!

defrost 4y ago

Mixed tables each with reduced cardinalities makes sense. > your description is strangely reductionist. Sure - pure | applied math background, old enough to have used Postgres when it was known as Ingres, to have patched in Spatial relations before it had the GIS functions it has now, and to have written libraries for GIS linked { 256 | 1024 | 2048 } D vector databases for signal aquisition | processing. I'm late to the 'modern' discussions & just checking my read - I can think of applications for mixed dimensions and discrete space vectors and there are analogs to trad R^N ops for those cases.

tudorw 4y ago
i think it might be a n-dimensional topological manifold with a nth dimensional geodesic supplying the shortest path, anyone actually done topology?
- tudorw 4y ago
  if you take a 2d piece of paper, draw the numbers 1 to 5 horizontally, then look at the distance between 1 and 5, or 1 and 3, they vary, now roll it into as cylinder, it's a manifold, and now the distance between 1 and 5 and 1 and 1 and 3 are the same, no matter how many numbers you had written on the paper, they would be connected by the shortest path, something like a helix I believe, the helix being the geodesic, now, increase the dimension, but keep rolling it up into that 'cylinder' and using a new geodesic to connect the shortest path, this is my layman's take on it, if you are #math please jump in and put me right!