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  1. Introduction to Machine Learning with TensorFlow.js
  2. Tensors
  3. What are Tensors?

What are Tensors?

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Tensors are the building blocks of a machine learning model. They are nothing to be scared of; you’ve most likely been using them for a while but have never called them Tensors.

They are a set of numbers of a specific size and shape.

So far, we’ve explained how neural network models are just functions that manipulate numbers, a set of input numbers of a specific size, into a set of output numbers into another size and shape. Tensors are how we represent those numbers, the inputs, the outputs, and everything in between.

Rank

The dimensionality of a Tensor we call it’s rank.

A 1D Tensor (or rank 1 Tensor) is just an array, like so:

1d tensor

A 2D Tensor (or rank 2 Tensor) is just a 2-dimensional array, so an array of arrays, like so:

2d tensor

A 3D Tensor (or rank 3 Tensor) is a cube. An array of arrays of arrays, like so:

3d tensor

Everything after 3D becomes harder to conceptualize, but let’s try. A 4D Tensor is an array of 3D Tensors, like so:

4d tensor

A 5D Tensor is an array of 4D Tensors, like so:

5d tensor

Shape

The size of each dimension in a Tensor we call its shape. For example, a Tensor to represent a black and white image would have the shape [width, height, colors].

For a 640 x 480 pixel black and white image, the shape would be [640,480, 1].

colors in this case would be of size 1; in a black and white image, the only color is black; in a color image, the size might be 3 with a value for red, green, and blue.

The rank of the Tensor is 3; it’s a 3D Tensor.

How to represent a data set of images?

For one type of machine learning, supervised learning[1], we provide large sets of training data for our machine learning models.

We represent a single black and white image as a 3D Tensor of shape [width, height, color].

We represent a set of 1000 black and white image as a 4D Tensor of shape [sample_size, width, height, color].

For example, a set of 1000, 640 x 480 pixel black and white images would be represented as 4D Tensor of Shape [1000, 640, 480, 1].

Summary

Tensors are just buckets of numbers of a specific shape and a certain rank (dimensionality). Tensors are used in Machine Learning with TensorFlow to represent input data and output data (and everything in between) in Machine Learning models.


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