numpy matrix multiplication shapes [duplicate]

Answer 1

The * operator for numpy arrays is element wise multiplication (similar to the Hadamard product for arrays of the same dimension), not matrix multiply.

For example:

>>> a
array([[0],
       [1],
       [2]])
>>> b
array([0, 1, 2])
>>> a*b
array([[0, 0, 0],
       [0, 1, 2],
       [0, 2, 4]])

For matrix multiply with numpy arrays:

>>> a = np.ones((3,2))
>>> b = np.ones((2,4))
>>> np.dot(a,b)
array([[ 2.,  2.,  2.,  2.],
       [ 2.,  2.,  2.,  2.],
       [ 2.,  2.,  2.,  2.]])

In addition you can use the matrix class:

>>> a=np.matrix(np.ones((3,2)))
>>> b=np.matrix(np.ones((2,4)))
>>> a*b
matrix([[ 2.,  2.,  2.,  2.],
        [ 2.,  2.,  2.,  2.],
        [ 2.,  2.,  2.,  2.]])

More information on broadcasting numpy arrays can be found here, and more information on the matrix class can be found here.