Difference between numpy.array shape (R, 1) and (R,)

Question

In numpy, some of the operations return in shape (R, 1) but some return (R,). This will make matrix multiplication more tedious since

Answer 1

The shape is a tuple. If there is only 1 dimension the shape will be one number and just blank after a comma. For 2+ dimensions, there will be a number after all the commas.

# 1 dimension with 2 elements, shape = (2,). 
# Note there's nothing after the comma.
z=np.array([  # start dimension
    10,       # not a dimension
    20        # not a dimension
])            # end dimension
print(z.shape)

(2,)

# 2 dimensions, each with 1 element, shape = (2,1)
w=np.array([  # start outer dimension 
    [10],     # element is in an inner dimension
    [20]      # element is in an inner dimension
])            # end outer dimension
print(w.shape)

(2,1)