Performance of data retrieval from a simple wordlist in a Pandas dataframe with a string based index – II

In my last post I set up a Pandas dataframe with a column containing a (German) wordlist of around 2.2 million words. We created a unique string based index for the dataframe from a column wither “lower case” writing of the words. My eventual objectives are

  1. to find out whether a string like token out of some millions of tokens is a member of the wordlist or not,
  2. to compare n-grams of characters, i.e. (sub-strings) of millions of given strange string tokens with the n-grams of each word in the wordlist.

In the first case a kind of “existence-query” on the wordlist is of major importance. We could work with a condition on a row-value or somehow use the string based index itself. For the second objective we need a requests on column values with “OR” conditions or again a kind of existence-queries on individual columns, which we turn into index structures before.

It found it interesting and a bit frustrating that a lot of introductory articles on the Internet and even books do not comment on performance. In this article we, therefore, compare the performance of different forms of simple data requests on a Pandas dataframe. To learn a bit more about Pandas’ response times, we extend the data retrieval requests a bit beyond the objectives listed above: We are going to look for rows where conditions for multiple words are fulfilled.

For the time being we restrict our experiments to a dataframe with just one UNIQUE index. I.e. we do not, yet, work with a multi-index. However, at the end of this article, I am going to look a bit at a dataframe with a NON-UNIQUE index, too.

Characteristics of the dataframe and the “query”

We work on a Pandas dataframe “dfw_smallx” with the following characteristics:

pdx_shape = dfw_smallx.shape
print("shape of dfw_smallx = ", pdx_shape)
pdx_rows = pdx_shape[0]
pdx_cols = pdx_shape[1]
print("rows of dfw_smallx = ", pdx_rows)
print("cols of dfw_smallx = ", pdx_cols)
print("column names", dfw_smallx.columns)
print("index", dfw_smallx.index)
print("index is unique: ", dfw_smallx.index.is_unique)
print('')
print(dfw_smallx.loc[['aachener']])
shape of dfw_smallx =  (2188246, 3)
rows of dfw_smallx =  2188246
cols of dfw_smallx =  3
column names Index(['lower', 'word', 'len'], dtype='object')
index Index(['aachener', 'aachenerin', 'aachenerinnen', 'aachenern', 'aacheners',
       'aachens', 'aal', 'aale', 'aalen', 'aales',
       ...
       'zynisches', 'zynischste', 'zynischsten', 'zynismus', 'zypern',
       'zyperns', 'zypresse', 'zypressen', 'zyste', 'zysten'],
      dtype='object', name='indw', length=2188246)
index is unique:  True

             lower      word  len
indw                             
aachener  aachener  AACHENER    8

The only difference to the dataframe created in the last article is the additional column “lower”, repeating the index. As said, the string based index of this dataframe is unique (checked by dfw_smallx.index.is_unique). At the end of this post we shall also have a look at a similar dataframe with a non-unique index.

Query: For a comparison we look at different methods to answer the following question: Are there entries for the words “null”, “mann” and “frau” in the list?

We apply each methods a hundred times to get some statistics. I did the experiments on a CPU (i7-6700K). The response time depends a bit on the background load – I took the best result out of three runs.

Unique index: CPU Time for checking the existence of an entry within the index itself

There is a very simple answer to the question, of how one can check the existence of a value in a (string based) index of a Pandas dataframe. We just use
r

(‘STRING-VALUE‘ in df.index)” !

Let us apply this for three values

b1 = 0; b2=0; b3=0;  
v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    if 'null' in dfw_smallx.index:
        b1 = 1
    if 'mann' in dfw_smallx.index:
        b2=1 
    if 'frau' in dfw_smallx.index:
        b3=1
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
b4 = 'gamling' in dfw_smallx.index 
print(b1, b2, b3, b4)
Total CPU time  0.00020675300038419664
NULL
1 1 1 False

Giving me a total time on my old PC of about 2.1e-4 secs. Which – as we are going to see is a pretty good value – for Pandas!

Total time 2.1e-4 secs.    Per query: 6.9e-7 secs.

Unique index: CPU Time for checking the existence of an entry with a Python dictionary

It is interesting to compare the query time required for a simple dictionary.

We first create a usable dictionary with the lower case word strings as the index:

ay_voc = dfw_smallx.to_numpy()
print(ay_voc.shape)
print(ay_voc[0:2, :])

ay_lower = ay_voc[:,0].copy()
d_lower = dict(enumerate(ay_lower))
d_low   = {y:x for x,y in d_lower.items()}
print(d_lower[0])
print(d_low['aachener'])
(2188246, 3)
[['aachener' 'AACHENER' 8]
 ['aachenerin' 'AACHENERIN' 10]]
aachener
0

And then:

b1 = 0; b2 = 0; b3 = 0
v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    if 'null' in d_low:
        b1 = 1
    if 'mann' in d_low:
        b2=1 
    if 'frau' in d_low:
        b3=1    
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)

print(b1, b2, b3)
print(d_low['mann'], d_low['frau'])
Total CPU time  8.626400085631758e-05
1 1 1
1179968 612385

Total time 8.6e-5 secs.    Per query: 2.9e-7 secs.

A dictionary is by almost a factor of 2.4 faster regarding a verification of the existence of a given string value in a string based index than related queries on an indexed Pandas series or dataframes!

Unique index: CPU Time for direct “at”-queries by providing individual index values

Now, let us start with repeated query calls on a our dataframe with the “at”-operator:

v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    wordx = dfw_smallx.at['null', 'word']
    wordy = dfw_smallx.at['mann', 'word']
    wordz = dfw_smallx.at['frau', 'word']
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
Total CPU time  0.0013257559985504486

Total time: 1.3e-3 secs.    Per query: 4.4e-6 secs
This approach is by factors 6.5 and 15 slower than the fastest solutions for Pandas and the dictionary, respectively

Unique index: CPU Time for direct “loc”-queries by providing individual index values

We now compare this with the same queries – but with the “loc”-operator:

v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    wordx = dfw_smallx.loc['null', 'word']
    wordy = dfw_smallx.loc['mann', 'word']
    wordz = dfw_smallx.loc['frau', 'word']
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
Total CPU time  0.0021894429992244113
NULL

Total time: 2.2e-3 secs. &
nbsp;  Per query: 7.3e-6 secs
More than a factor of 10.6 and 25.4 slower than the fastest Pandas solution and the dictionary, respectively.

Unique index: CPU Time for a query based on a list of index values

Now, let us use a list of index values – something which would be typical for a programmer who wants to save some typing time:

# !!!! Much longer CPU time for a list of index values  
inf = ['null', 'mann', 'frau']
v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    wordx = dfw_smallx.loc[inf, 'word'] # a Pandas series 
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
print(wordx)
Total CPU time  0.037733839999418706
indw
null    NULL
mann    MANN
frau    FRAU
Name: word, dtype: object

Total time: 3.8e-2 secs.    Per query: 1.3e-4 secs
More than a factor of 182 and 437 slower than the fastest Pandas solution and the dictionary, respectively.

Unique index: CPU Time for a query based on a list of index values with index.isin()

We now try a small variation by

ix = dfw_smallx.index.isin(['null', 'mann', 'frau'])
v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    wordx = dfw_smallx.loc[ix, 'word']
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
Total CPU time  0.058356915000331355

Total time: 5.8e-2 secs.    Per query: 1.9e-4 secs
We are loosing ground, again.
More than a factor of 282 and 667 slower than the fastest Pandas solution and the dictionary, respectively.

Unique index: CPU Time for a query based on a list of index values with index.isin() within loc()

Yet, another seemingly small variation

inf = ['null', 'mann', 'frau']
v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    wordx = dfw_smallx.loc[dfw_smallx.index.isin(inf), 'word']
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
Total CPU time  6.466159620998951

OOOOPs!
Total time: 6.48 secs.    Per query: 2.2e-2 secs
More than a factor of 31000 and 75000 slower than the fastest Pandas solution and the dictionary, respectively.

Unique index: Query by values for a column and ignoring the index

What happens if we ignore the index and query by values of a column?

v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    pdq = dfw_smallx.query('indw == "null" | indw == "mann" | indw == "frau" ')
    #print(pdq)
    w1 = pdq.iloc[0,0]
    w2 = pdq.iloc[1,0]
    w3 = pdq.iloc[2,0]
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
Total CPU time  16.747838952000166

Well, well – the worst result so far!
Total time: 16.75 secs.    Per query: 5.6e-2 secs
More than a factor of 81000 and 194000 slower than the fastest Pandas solution and the dictionary, respectively.

The following takes even longer:

v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    word3 = dfw_smallx.loc[dfw_smallx['word'] == 'NULL', 'word']
    word4 = dfw_smallx.loc[dfw_smallx['word'] == 'MANN', 'word']
    word5 = dfw_smallx.loc[dfw_smallx['word'] == 'FRAU', 'word']
    w4 = word3.iloc[0]
    w5 = word4.iloc[0]
    w6 = word4.iloc[0]
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
r
Total CPU time  22.6538158809999

Total time: 22.76 secs.    Per query: 7.6e-2 secs
More than a factor of 109000 and 262000 slower than the fastest Pandas solution and the dictionary, respectively.

However:

v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    pdl = dfw_smallx.loc[dfw_smallx['word'].isin(['MANN', 'FRAU', 'NULL' ]), 'word']
    w6 = pdl.iloc[0]
    w7 = pdl.iloc[1]
    w8 = pdl.iloc[2]
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)

This gives us 6.576 secs again.

Unique index: Query by values of a dictionary and ignoring the index

Here a comparison to a dictionary is interesting again:

v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
b1 = 0; b2 = 0; b3 = 0
for i in range(0, 100):
    if 'null' in d_lower.values():
        b1 = 1
    if 'mann' in d_lower.values():
        b2=1 
    if 'frau' in d_lower.values():
        b3=1    
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
print(b1, b2, b3)
Total CPU time  4.572028649003187
1 1 1

So a dictionary is faster than Pandas – even if we ignore the index and query for certain values!

Intermediate conclusions

What do the above results tell us about the handling of Pandas dataframes or series with strings as elements and an unique index containing strings, too?

The first thing is:

If possible do not use a Pandas dataframe at all! Turn (two) required (string) columns of the dataframe into a string indexed dictionary!

In our case a simple solution was to turn a column with lower case writings of the words into a dictionary index and using an enumerated column as values.

A dictionary with string based keys will give you by far the fastest solution if you are only interested in the existence of a certain key-value.

Now, if you want to use Pandas to check the existence of a certain string in a unique index or column the following rules should be followed:

  • Whenever possible use a (unique) index based on the strings whose existence you are interested in.
  • For pure existence checks of a string in the index use a query of the type
    “if ‘STRING‘ in df.index”.
    This will give you the fastest solution with Pandas.
  • Whenever possible use a series of simple queries – each for exactly one index value and one or multiple column labels instead of providing multiple index values in a list.
  • If you want to use the “at” or “loc”-operators, prefer the “at”-operator for a unique index! The form should be
    result = df.at[‘IndexValue’, ‘ColLabel’].
    The loc-operator
    result = df.loc[‘IndexValue’, ‘colLabel1’, ‘colLabel2’, …] is somewhat slower, but the right choice if you want to retrieve multiple columns for a single row index value.
  • Avoid results which themselves become Pandas dataframes or series – i.e. results which contain a multitude of rows and column values
  • Avoid queries on column-values! The CPU times to produce results depending on conditions for a column may vary; factors between 6 and 200,000 in comparison to the fastest solution for single values are possible.

Using a string based index in a Pandas dataframe is pretty fast because Pandas then uses a hash-function and a hashtable to index datarows. Very much like Python handles dictionaries.

Dataframes with a non-unique string index

Let us now quickly check what happens if we turn to a vocabulary with a non-unique
string based index. We can easily get this from the standard checked German wordlist provided by T.Brischalle.

dfw_fullx = pd.read_csv('/py/projects/CA22/catch22/Wortlisten/word_list_german_spell_checked.txt', dtype='str', na_filter=False)
dfw_fullx.columns = ['word']
dfw_fullx['indw'] = dfw_fullx['word']

pdfx_shape = dfw_fullx.shape
print('')
print("shape of dfw_fullx = ", pdfx_shape)
pdfx_rows = pdfx_shape[0]
pdfx_cols = pdfx_shape[1]
print("rows of dfw_fullx = ", pdfx_rows)
print("cols of dfw_fullx = ", pdfx_cols)

giving:

shape of dfw_fullx =  (2243546, 2)
rows of dfw_fullx =  2243546
cols of dfw_fullx =  2

We set an index as before by lowercase word values:

dfw_fullx['indw'] = dfw_fullx['word'].str.lower()
dfw_fullx = dfw_fullx.set_index('indw')

word_null = dfw_fullx.loc['null', 'word']
word_mann = dfw_fullx.loc['mann', 'word']
word_frau = dfw_fullx.loc['frau', 'word']

print('')
print(word_null)
print('')
print(word_mann)
print('')
print(word_frau)

Giving:

indw
null    null
null    Null
null    NULL
Name: word, dtype: object

indw
mann    Mann
mann    MANN
Name: word, dtype: object

indw
frau    Frau
frau    FRAU
Name: word, dtype: object

You see directly that the index is not unique.

Non-unique index: CPU Time for direct queries by with single index values

We repeat our first experiment from above :

v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
for i in range(0, 100):
    pds1 = dfw_fullx.loc['null', 'word']
    pds2 = dfw_fullx.loc['mann', 'word']
    pds3 = dfw_fullx.loc['frau', 'word']
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
print(pds1) 

This results in:

indw
null    null
null    Null
null    NULL
Name: word, dtype: object
TotalCPU time  7.232291821999752

7.2 secs! Not funny!

The reason is that the whole index must be checked for entries of the given value.

Why the whole dataset? Well, Pandas cannot be sure that the string based index is sorted in a way!

Non-unique index: CPU Time for direct queries by single index values and a sorted index

We remedy the above problem by sorting the index:

dfw_fullx = dfw_fullx.sort_index(axis=0)

And afterwards we try our test from above again – this time giving us :

indw
null    Null
null    null
null    NULL
Name: word, dtype: object
Total CPU time  0.04120599599991692

0.041 secs – much faster. On average the response time now depends on log(N) because Pandas now can use a binary search – with N being the number of elements in the index.

Conclusions

For me as a beginner with Pandas the multitude of options to retrieve values from a Pandas series or dataframe was confusing and their relation to index involvement and the construction of the “result set” was not always obvious. Even more surprising, however, was the impact on performance:

As soon as you hit multiple rows by a “query” a Pandas series or dataframe is constructed which contains the results. This may have advantages regarding the presentation of the result data and advantages regarding a convenient post-query handling of the results. It is however a costly procedure in terms of CPU time. In database language:

For Pandas building the result set can become more costly than the query itself – even for short result sets. This was in a way a bit disappointing.

If you are interested in just the existence of a certain string values in a list of unique strings just create a
dictionary – indexed by your string values. Then check the existence of a string value by “(‘STRING-VALUE‘ in dict)”.
You do not need Pandas or this task!

When you want to use an (indexed) Pandas for existence checks then query like “if ‘STRING-VALUE‘ in df.index” to check the existence of a string value in the properly created string based index.

When you need a bunch of values in various columns for given indices go for the “at”-operator and individual queries for each index value – and not a list.

When retrieving values you should, in general, use a direct form of “selecting” by just one index value and (if possible) one column value with the “at”-operator (df.at[‘indexValue’, ‘columnLabel’]). The loc-operator is up to a factor 1,7 slower – but relevant if you query for more than one columns.

Non-unique indices cost time, too. If you have no chance to associate your dataframe with unique index that suits your objectives then sort the non-unique index at least.

Performance of data retrieval from a simple wordlist in a Pandas dataframe with a string based index – I

When preparing a bunch of texts for Machine Learning [ML] there may come a point where you need to eliminate probable junk words or simply wrongly written words form the texts. This is especially true for scanned texts. Let us assume that you have already applied a tokenizer to your texts and that you have created a “bag of words” [BoW] for each individual text or even a global one for all of your texts.

Now, you may want to compare each word in your bag with a checked list of words – a “reference vocabulary” – which you assume to comprise the most relevant words of a language. If you do not find a specific word of your bag in your reference “vocabulary” you may want to put this word into a second bag for a later, more detailed analysis. Such an analysis may be based on a table where the vocabulary words are split in n-grams of characters. These n-grams will stored in additional columns added to your wordlist, thus turning it into a 2-dimensional array of data.

Such tasks require a tool which – among other things –

  • is able to load 1-, 2-dimensional and sometimes 3-dimensional data structures in a fast way from CSV-files into series-, table- or cube-like data structures in RAM,
  • provides tools to select, filter, retrieve and manipulate data from rows,columns and cells,
  • provides tools to operate on a multitude of rows or columns,
  • provides tools to create some statistics on the data.

All of it pretty fast – which means that the tool must support the creation of an index or indices and/or support vectorized operations (mostly on columns).

I had read in ML books the Pandas is such a tool for a Python environment. A way to accomplish our task would be to load the reference vocabulary into a Pandas structure and check the words of the BoW(s) against it. This means that you try to find the word in the reference list and evaluate the result (positive or negative). And when you are done with this challenge you may want to retrieve additional information from a 2-dimensional Pandas data structure.

This article is about the performance of some data retrieval experiments I recently did on a wordlist of around 2 million words. The objective was to check the existence of tokenized words of some 200.000 texts, each with around 2000 tokens, against this wordlist being embedded in a Pandas dataframe and also to retrieve additional information from other columns of the dataframe.

As we talk about scanned texts and OCR treatment it is very probable that the number of tokens you have to compare with your vocabulary is well above 10 millions. It is clear that there is an requirement for performance if you want to work with a standard Linux PC.

Multiple ways to retrieve or query information from a Pandas series or dataframe

When I started to really use Pandas some days ago I became a bit overwhelmed by the documentation – and the differences in comparison to databases. After having used a database like MySQL for years I had a certain vision about the handling of “table”-like data and related performance. Well, I had to swallow some camels!

And when I started to really care about performance I also realized that there where very many ways to “query” a Pandas dataframe – and not all will give you the same speed in data retrieval.

This article, therefore, dives a bit below the glittering surface of Pandas and looks at different methods to retrieve rows and certain cell values out of a simple “Pandas dataframe”. To work with some practical data I used a reference vocabulary for the German language based on Wikipedia articles.

The first objective was very simple: Verify that a certain word is an element in the reference vocabulary.
The second objective was a natural extension: Retrieve
rows (with multiple columns) for fitting entries – sometimes multiple entries with different word writings.

I was somewhat astonished top see factors between at least 16 and 10.000 for real data retrieval, in comparison with the fastest solution. Just checking the existence of a word in the wordlist proved to be extremely faster after having created a suitable index – and not using any data columns at all.

The response times of Pandas depended strongly on the “query” method and the usage of an index.

I hope the information given below and in the next article is useful for other beginners with Pandas. I shall speak of a “query” when I want to select data from a Pandas dataframe and a “resultset” when addressing one or a collection of data rows as the result of a query. Can’t forget my time with databases …

I assume that you already have a valid Pandas installation in a Python 3 environment on your Linux PC. I did my simple experiments with a Jupyter notebook, but, of course, other tools can be used, too.

Loading an example wordlist into a Pandas dataframe

For my small “query” experiments I first loaded a simple list with around 2.1 million words from a text file into a Pandas data structure. This operation created a so called “Pandas series” and also produced an unique index – appearing as integers, which marked each row of the data with a specific integer.

Then I created two additional columns: The first one with all words written in lower case letters. The second one containing the number of characters of the word’s string. By these operations I created a real 2-dim object – a so called Pandas “dataframe”.

Let us follow this line of operations as a first step. So, where do we get a wordlist from?

A friendly engineer (Torsten Brischalle) has provided a German word-list based on Wikipedia which we can use as an example.
See: http://www.aaabbb.de/WordList/WordList.php

We first import the “uppercase”-wordlist. You can download from this link. On your Linux PC you expand the 7zip archive by standard Linux tools.

This “uppercase” list has the advantage that an index which we will later base on the lowercase writing of the words will (hopefully) be unique. The more extensive wordlist also provided by Brischalle instead comprises multiple writings for some words. The related index would, therefore, not be unique. We shall see that this has a major impact on the response time of the resulting Pandas dataframe.

The wordlists, after 7zip-expansion, all are very simple text-files: Each line contains just one word.

We shall nevertheless work with a 2-dim general Pandas “dataframe” instead of a “series”. A reason is that in a real data analysis environment we may want to add multiple columns with more information later on. E.g. columns for n-grams of character sequences constituting the word or for other information as frequencies, consonant to vocal ratio, etc. And then we would work on 2-dim data structures.

Loading the data into a Pandas dataframe and creating an index based on lowercase word representation

Let us import the wordlist data by the help of some Python code in a Jupyter cell (in my case from a directory “/py/projects/CA22/catch22/Wortlisten/”):

import os
import time
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

dfw_smallx = pd.read_csv('/py/projects/CA22/catch22/Wortlisten/word_list_german_uppercase_spell_checked.txt', dtype='str', na_filter=False)
dfw_smallx.columns = ['word']
dfw_smallx['indw'] = dfw_smallx['word']

pdx_shape = dfw_smallx.shape
print("shape of dfw_smallx = ", pdx_shape)
pdx_rows = pdx_shape[0]
pdx_cols = pdx_shape[1]
print("rows of dfw_smallx = ", pdx_rows)
print("cols 
of dfw_smallx = ", pdx_cols)

dfw_smallx.head(8)

You see that we need to import the Pandas module besides other standard modules. Then you find that Pandas obviously provides a function “read_csv()” to import CSV like text files. You find more about it in the Pandas documentation here.
The CSV import should in our case be a matter of a few seconds, only.

A column name or column names can be added to a Pandas series or Pandas dataframe, respectively, afterward.

Why did I use the parameter “na_filter“? Well, this was done to handle a special value in the wordlist, namely “NULL”. You may remember that this is a key-word in Python! We would get an empty entry in the dataframe for this input value without the named parameter. You find more information on this topic in the Pandas documentation on the “read_csv()”-function.

The reader also notices that I just named the single data column (resulting from the import) ‘word’ and then copied this column to another new column called ‘indw’. I shall use the latter column as an index in a minute. I then print out some information on the dataframe:

shape of dfw_smallx =  (2188246, 2)
rows of dfw_smallx =  2188246
cols of dfw_smallx =  2

	word 			indw
0 	AACHENER 		AACHENER
1 	AACHENERIN 		AACHENERIN
2 	AACHENERINNEN 	AACHENERINNEN
3 	AACHENERN 		AACHENERN
4 	AACHENERS 		AACHENERS
5 	AACHENS 		AACHENS
6 	AAL 			AAL
7 	AALE			AALE

Almost 2.2 million words. OK, I do not like uppercase. I want a lowercase representation to be used as an index later on. This gives me the opportunity to apply an operation to a whole column with 2.2 mio words.

The creation of our string based index can be achieved by the “set_index()” function:

dfw_smallx['indw'] = dfw_smallx['word'].str.lower()
dfw_smallx = dfw_smallx.set_index('indw')
dfw_smallx.head(5)

Leading after less than 0.5 secs (!) to:

 				word
indw 	
aachener 		AACHENER
aachenerin 		AACHENERIN
aachenerinnen 	AACHENERINNEN
aachenern 		AACHENERN
aacheners 		AACHENERS

Now, let us add one more column containing the length information on the word(s).

This can be done by two methods

  • dfw_smallx[‘len’] = dfw_smallx[‘word’].str.len()
  • dfw_smallx[‘len’] = dfw_smallx[‘word’].apply(len)

The second method is a bit faster (by a factor of 0.7), but does not work on NaN cells of a column. In our case no problem, we get:

# A a column for len information 
v_start_time = time.perf_counter()
dfw_smallx['len'] = dfw_smallx['word'].apply(len)
v_end_time = time.perf_counter()
print("Total CPU time ", v_end_time - v_start_time)
dfw_smallx.head(3)

Total CPU time  0.3626117290004913

			word 			len
indw 		
aachener 		AACHENER 		8
aachenerin 		AACHENERIN 		10
aachenerinnen 	AACHENERINNEN 	13

Basics of addressing data in a Pandas dataframe

Ok, we have loaded our reference list of words into a dataframe. A Pandas “dataframe” basically is a 2-dimensional data structure based on Numpy array technology for the columns. Now, we want to address data in specific rows or cells. Below I repeat some basics for the retrieval of single values from a dataframe:

Each “cell” has a two dimensional integer-“index” – a tuple [i,j], with “i” identifying a row and “j” a column. You can use respective integer values by the “iloc[]“-operator. E.g. dfw_smallx.iloc[2,1] will give you the value “13”.

The “loc[]“-operator instead works with “labels” given to the rows and columns; in the most primitive form as :

dataframe.loc[row label, column label], e.g. dfw_smallx.loc.[ ‘aachenerinnen’, ‘len’ ] .

Labels have to be defined. For columns you may define names (often already during construction of the dataframe). For rows you may define an index – as we actually did above. If you want to compare this with databases: You define a primary key (sometimes based on column-combinations).

Other almost equivalent methods

  • iat[] – operator ,
  • at[] – operator,
  • array like usage of the column label + row-index
  • and the so called dot-notation

for the retrieval of single values are presented in the following code snippet:

print(dfw_smallx.iloc[2,1])
print(dfw_smallx.iat[2,1])
print(dfw_smallx['len'][2]) 
print(dfw_smallx.loc['aachenerinnen', 'len'])
print(dfw_smallx.at['aachenerinnen', 'len'])
print(dfw_smallx.len.aachenerinnen)

13
13
13
13
13
13

Note that the “iat[]” and “at[]” operators can only be used for cells, so both row and column values have to be provided; the other methods can be used for more general slicing of columns.

Slicing

Slicing in general supported by the “:” notation – just as in NumPy. So, with the notation “labelvalue1 : labelvalue2” one can define slices. This works even for string label values:

words = dfw_smallx.loc['alt':'altersschwach', 'word':'len']
print(words)
                          word  len
indw                               
alt                        ALT    3
altaachener        ALTAACHENER   11
altablage            ALTABLAGE    9
altablagen          ALTABLAGEN   10
altablagerung    ALTABLAGERUNG   13
...                        ...  ...
altersschnitt    ALTERSSCHNITT   13
altersschnitts  ALTERSSCHNITTS   14
altersschrift    ALTERSSCHRIFT   13
altersschutz      ALTERSSCHUTZ   12
altersschwach    ALTERSSCHWACH   13

[3231 rows x 2 columns]

Queries with conditions on column values – and Pandas objects containing multiple results

Now let us look at some queries with conditions on columns and the form of the “result sets” when more than just a single value is returned in a Pandas response. Multiple return values may mean multiple rows (with one or more column values) or just one row with multiple column values. Two points are noteworthy:

  1. Pandas produces a new dataframe or series with multiple rows if multiple values are returned. Whenever we get a Pandas “object” with an internal structure as a Pandas response, we need to narrow down the result to the particular value we want to see.
  2. To grasp a certain value you need to include some special methods already in the “query” or to apply a method to the result series or dataframe.

An interesting type of “query” for a Pandas dataframe is provided by the “query()“-function: it allows us to retrieve rows or single values by conditions on column entries. But conditions can also be supplied when using the “loc[]” operator:

w1 = dfw_smallx.loc['null', 'word']
pd_w2 = dfw_smallx.loc['null'] # resulting in a series 
w2 = pd_w2[0]
pd_w3 = dfw_smallx.loc[dfw_smallx['word'] == 'NULL', 'word']
w3 = pd_w3[0]
pd_w4 = dfw_smallx.query('word == "NULL"')
w4 = pd_w4.iloc[0,0]
w5 = dfw_smallx.query('word == "NULL"').iloc[0,0]
w6 = dfw_smallx.query('word == "NULL"').word.item()
print("w1 = ", w1)
print("pd_w2 = ", pd_w2)
print("w2 = ", w2)
print("pd_wd3 = ", pd_w3)
print("w3 = ", w3)
print("w4 = ", w4)
print("w5 = ", w5)
print("w6 = ", w6)
r

I have added a prefix “pd_” to some variables where I expected a Pandas dataframe to be the answer. And really:

w1 =  NULL
pd_w2 =  word    NULL
len        4
Name: null, dtype: object
w2 =  NULL
pd_wd3 =  indw
null    NULL
Name: word, dtype: object
w3 =  NULL
w4 =  NULL
w5 =  NULL
w6 =  NULL

Noteworthy: For loc[] (in contrast to iloc[]) the last value of the slice definition is included in the result set.

Retrieving data by a list of index values

As soon as you dig a bit deeper into the Pandas documentation you will certainly find the following way to retrieve multiple rows by providing a list of of index values:

# Retrieving col values by a list of index values 
inf = ['null', 'mann', 'frau']
wordx = dfw_smallx.loc[inf, 'word']
wx = wordx.iloc[0:3] # resulting in a Pandas series 
print(wx.iloc[0])
print(wx.iloc[1])
print(wx.iloc[2])
NULL
MANN
FRAUp

Intermediate conclusion

The variety of options even in our very simple scenario to retrieve values from a wordlist (with an additional column) is almost overwhelming. They all serve their purpose – depending on the structure of the dataframe and your knowledge on the data positions.

But actually in our scenario for analyzing a BoWs, we have a very simple task ahead of us: We just want to check whether a word or a list of words exists in the list, i.e. if there is an entry for a word (written in small letters) in the list. What about the performance of the different methods for this task?

Actually, there is a very simple answer for the existence check – giving you maximum performance.

But to learn a bit more about the performance of different forms of Pandas queries we also shall look at methods performing some real data retrieval from the columns of a row addressed by some (string) index value.

These will be the topics of the next article. Stay tuned …

Links

Various ways of “querying” Pandas dataframes
https://www.sharpsightlabs.com/blog/pandas-loc/
https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/10min.html
https://cmsdk.com/python/select-rows-from-a-dataframe-based-on-values-in-a-column-in-pandas.html
https://pythonexamples.org/pandas-dataframe-query/

The book “Mastering Pandas” of Ashish Kumar, 2nd, edition, 2019, Packt Publishing Ltd. may be of help – though it does not really comment on performance issues on this level.

NULL values
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50683765/how-to-treat-null-as-a-normal-string-with-pandas

MLP, Numpy, TF2 – performance issues – Step II – bias neurons, F- or C- contiguous arrays and performance

Welcome back, my friends of MLP coding. In the last article we gave the code developed in the article series

A simple Python program for an ANN to cover the MNIST dataset – I – a starting point

a first performance boost by two simple measures:

  • We set all major arrays to the “numpy.float32” data type instead of the default “float64”.
  • In addition we eliminated superfluous parts of the backward [BW] propagation between the first hidden layer and the input layer.

This brought us already down to around

11 secs for 35 epochs on the MNIST dataset, a batch-size of 500 and an accuracy around 99 % on the training set

This was close to what Keras (and TF2) delivered for the same batch size. It marks the baseline for further performance improvements of our MLP code.

Can we get better than 11 secs for 35 epochs? The answer is: Yes, we can – but only in small steps. So, do not expect any gigantic performance leaps for the training loop itself. But, there was and is also our observation that there is no significant acceleration with growing batch sizes over 1000 – but with Keras we saw such an acceleration.

In this article I shall shortly discuss why we should care about big batch sizes – at least in combination with FW-propagation. Afterwards I want to draw your attention to a specific code segment of our MLP. We shall see that an astonishingly simple array operation dominates the CPU time of our straight forward coded FW propagation. Especially for big batch sizes!

Actually, it is an operation I would never have guessed to be such an an obstacle to efficiency if somebody had asked me. As a naive Python beginner I had to learn that the arrangement of arrays in the computer’s memory sometimes have an impact – especially when big arrays are involved. To get to this generally useful insight we will have to invest some effort into performance tests of some specific Numpy operations on arrays. The results give us some options for possible performance improvements; but in the end we shall circumvent the impediment all together.

The discussion will indicate that we should change our treatment of bias neurons fundamentally. We shall only go a preliminary step in this direction. This step will give us already a 15% improvement regarding the training time. But even more important, it will reward us with a significant improvement – by a factor > 2.5 – with respect to the FW-propagation of the complete training and test data sets, i.e. for the FW-propagation of “batches” with big sizes (60000 or 10000 samples).

“np.” abbreviates the “Numpy” library below. I shall sometimes speak of our 2-dimensional Numpy “arrays” as “matrices” in an almost synonymous way. See, however, one of the links at the bottom of the article for the subtle differences of related data types. For the time being we can safely ignore the mathematical differences between matrices, stacks of matrices and tensors. But we should have a clear understanding of the profound difference between the “*“-operation and the “np.dot()“-operation on 2-dimensional arrays.

Why are big batch sizes relevant?

There are several reasons why we should care about an efficient treatment of big batches. I name a few, only:

  • Numpy operations on bigger matrices may become more efficient on systems with multiple CPUs, CPU cores or multiple GPUs.
  • Big batch sizes together with a relatively small learning rate will lead to a smoother descent path on the cost hyperplane. Could become important in some intricate real life scenarios beyond MNIST.
  • We should test the achieved accuracy on evaluation and test datasets during training. This data sets may have a much bigger size than the training batches.

The last point addresses the problem of overfitting: We may approach a minimum of the loss function of the training data set, but may leave the minimum of the cost function (and of related errors) of the test data set at some point. Therefore, we should check the accuracy on evaluation and test data sets already during the training phase. This requires the FW-propagation of such sets – preferably in one sweep. I.e. we talk about the propagation of really big batches with 10000 samples or more.

How do we measure the accuracy? Regarding the training set we gather averaged errors of batches during the training run and determine the related accuracy at the end of every printout period via an average over all batches: The average is taken over the absolute values of the difference between the sigmoidal output and the one-hot encoded target values of the batch samples. Note that this will give us slightly different values than tests where Numpy.argmax() is applied to the output first.

We can verify the accuracy also on the complete training and test data sets. Often we will do so after each and every epoch. Then we involve argmax(), by the way to get numbers in terms of correctly classified samples.

We saw that the forward [FW] propagation of the complete training data set “X_train” in one sweep requires a substantial (!) amount of CPU time in the present state of our code. When we perform such a test at each and every epoch on the training set the pure training time is prolonged by roughly a factor 1.75. As said: In real live scenarios we would rather or in addition perform full accuracy tests on prepared evaluation and test data sets – but they are big “batches” as well.

So, one relevant question is: Can we reduce the time required for a forward [FW] propagation of complete training and test data sets in one vectorized sweep?

Which operation dominates the CPU time of our present MLP forward propagation?

The present code for the FW-propagation of a mini-batch through my MLP comprises the following statements – enriched below by some lines to measure the required CPU-time:

 
    ''' -- Method to handle FW propagation for a mini-batch --'''
    def _fw_propagation(self, li_Z_in, li_A_out):
        ''' 
        Parameter: 
        li_Z_in :   list of input values at all layers  - li_Z_in[0] is already filled - 
                    other elemens to to be filled during FW-propagation
        li_A_out:   list of output values at all layers - to be filled during FW-propagation
        '''
        # index range for all layers 
        #    Note that we count from 0 (0=>L0) to E L(=>E) / 
        #    Careful: during BW-propagation we need a clear indexing of the lists filled during FW-propagation
        ilayer = range(0, self._n_total_layers-1)
        
        # propagation loop
        # ***************
        for il in ilayer:
            
            # Step 1: Take input of last layer and apply activation function 
            # ******
            ts=time.perf_counter()
            if il == 0: 
                A_out_il = li_Z_in[il] # L0: activation function is identity !!!
            else: 
                A_out_il = self._act_func( li_Z_in[il] ) # use defined activation function (e.g. sigmoid) 
            te=time.perf_counter(); ta = te - ts; print("\nta = ", ta, " shape = ", A_out_il.shape, " type = ", A_out_il.dtype, " A_out flags = ", A_out_il.flags) 
            
            # Step 2: Add bias node
            # ****** 
            ts=time.perf_counter()
            A_out_il = self._
add_bias_neuron_to_layer(A_out_il, 'row')
            li_A_out[il] = A_out_il
            te=time.perf_counter(); tb = te - ts; print("tb = ", tb, " shape = ", A_out_il.shape, " type = ", A_out_il.dtype) 
            
            # Step 3: Propagate by matrix operation
            # ****** 
            ts=time.perf_counter()
            Z_in_ilp1 = np.dot(self._li_w[il], A_out_il) 
            li_Z_in[il+1] = Z_in_ilp1
            te=time.perf_counter(); tc = te - ts; print("tc = ", tc, " shape = ", li_Z_in[il+1].shape, " type = ", li_Z_in[il+1].dtype) 
        
        # treatment of the last layer 
        # ***************************
        ts=time.perf_counter()
        il = il + 1
        A_out_il = self._out_func( li_Z_in[il] ) # use the defined output function (e.g. sigmoid)  
        li_A_out[il] = A_out_il
        te=time.perf_counter(); tf = te - ts; print("\ntf = ", tf) 
        
        return None

 
The attentive reader notices that I also included statements to print out information about the shape and so called “flags” of the involved arrays.

I give you some typical CPU times for the MNIST dataset first. Characteristics of the test runs were:

  • data were taken during the first two epochs;
  • the batch-size was 10000; i.e. we processed 6 batches per epoch;
  • “ta, tb, tc, tf” are representative data for a single batch comprising 10000 MNIST samples.

Averaged timing results for such batches are:

Layer L0
ta =  2.6999987312592566e-07
tb =  0.013209896002081223 
tc =  0.004847299001994543
Layer L1
ta =  0.005858420001459308
tb =  0.0005839099976583384
tc =  0.00040631899901200086
Layer L2
ta =  0.0025550600003043655
tb =  0.00026626299950294197
tc =  0.00022965300013311207
Layer3 
tf =  0.0008438359982392285

Such CPU time data vary of course a bit (2%) with the background activity on my machine and with the present batch, but the basic message remains the same. When I first saw it I could not believe it:

Adding a bias-neuron to the input layer obviously dominated the CPU-consumption during forward propagation. Not the matrix multiplication at the input layer L0!

I should add at this point that the problem increases with growing batch size! (We shall see this later in elementary test, too). This means that propagating the complete training or test dataset for accuracy check at each epoch will cost us an enormous amount of CPU time – as we have indeed seen in the last article. Performing a full propagation for an accuracy test at the end of each and every epoch increased the total CPU time roughly by a factor of 1.68 (19 sec vs. 11.33 secs for 35 epochs; see the last article).

Adding a row of constant input values of bias neurons

I first wanted to know, of course, whether my specific method of adding a bias neuron to the A-output matrix at each layer really was so expensive. My naive approach – following a suggestion in a book of S. Rashka, by the way – was:

def add_bias_neuron_to_layer(A, how='column'):
    if how == 'column':
        A_new = np.ones((A.shape[0], A.shape[1]+1), dtype=np.float32)
        A_new[:, 1:] = A
    elif how == 'row':
        A_new = np.ones((A.shape[0]+1, A.shape[1]), dtype=np.float32)
        A_new[1:, :] = A
    return A_new    

What we do here is to create a new array which is bigger by one row and fit the original array into it. Seemed to be a clever approach at the time of coding (and actually it is faster than using np.vstack or np.hstack). The operation is different from directly adding a row to the existing input array explicitly, but it still requires a lot of row operations.

As we have seen I call this function in “_fw_
propagation()” by

A_out_il = self._add_bias_neuron_to_layer(A_out_il, 'row')

“A_out_il” is the transposition of a slice of the original X_train array. The slice in our test case for MNIST had a shape of (10000, 784).
This means that we talk about a matrix with shape (784, 10000) in the case of the MNIST dataset before adding the bias neuron and a shape of (785, 10000) after. I.e. we add a row with 10000 constant entries at the beginning of our transposed slice. Note also that the function returns a new array in memory.

Thus, our approach contains two possibly costly operations. Why did we do such a strange thing in the first place?

Well, when we coded the MLP it seemed to be a good idea to include the fact that we have bias neurons directly in the definition of the weight matrices and their shapes. So, we need(ed) to fit our input matrices at the layers to the defined shape of the weight matrices. As we see it now, this is a questionable strategy regarding performance. But, well, let us not attack something at the very center of the MLP code for all layers (except the output layer) at this point in time. We shall do this in a forthcoming article.

A factor of 3 ??

To understand my performance problem a bit better, I did the following test in a Jupyter cell:

''' Method to add values for a bias neuron to A_out  all with C-cont. arrays '''
def add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C(A, how='column'):
    if how == 'column':
        A_new = np.ones((A.shape[0], A.shape[1]+1), dtype=np.float32)
        A_new[:, 1:] = A
    elif how == 'row':
        A_new = np.ones((A.shape[0]+1, A.shape[1]), dtype=np.float32)
        A_new[1:, :] = A
    return A_new    
input_shape =(784, 10000)
ay_inpC = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shape)*2.0, dtype=np.float32)
tx = time.perf_counter()
ay_inpCb = add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C(ay_inpC, 'row')
li_A.append(ay_inpCb)
ty = time.perf_counter(); t_biasC = ty - tx; 
print("\n bias time = ", "%10.8f"%t_biasC)
print("shape_biased = ", ay_inpCb.shape)

to get:

 bias time  =  0.00423444

Same batch-size, but substantially faster – by roughly a factor of 3! – compared to what my MLP code delivered. Actually the timing data varied a bit between 0.038 and 0.045 (with an average at 0.0042) when repeating the run. To exclude any problems with calling the function from within a Python class I repeated the same test inside the class “MyANN” during FW-propagation – with the same result (as it should be; see the first link at the end of this article).

So: Applying one and the same function on a randomly filled array was much faster than applying it on my Numpy (input) array “A_out_il” (with the same shape). ????

C- and F-contiguous arrays

It took me a while to find the reason: “A_out_il” is the result of a matrix transposition. In Numpy this corresponds to a certain view on the original array data – but this still has major consequences for the handling of the data:

A 2 dimensional array or matrix is an ordered addressable sequence of data in the computer’s memory. Now, if you yourself had to program an array representation in memory on a basic level you would – due to performance reasons – make a choice whether you arrange data row-wise or column-wise. And you would program functions for array-operations with your chosen “order” in mind!

Actually, if you google a bit you find that the two ways of arranging array or matrix data are both well established. In connection with Numpy we speak of either a C-contiguous order or a F-contiguous order of the array data. In the first case (C) data are stored and addressed row by row and can be read efficiently this way, in the other (F) case data are arranged
column by column. By the way: The “C” refers to the C-language, the “F” to Fortran.

On a Linux system Numpy normally creates and operates with C-contiguous arrays – except when you ask Numpy explicitly to work differently. Quite many array related functions, therefore, have a parameter “order”, which you can set to either ‘C’ or ‘F’.

Now, let us assume that we have a C-contiguous array. What happens when we transpose it – or look at it in a transposed way? Well, logically it then becomes F-contiguous! Then our “A_out_il” would be seen as F-contiguous. Could this in turn have an impact on performance? Well, I create “A_out_il” in method “_handle_mini_batch()” of my MyANN-class via

        # Step 0: List of indices for data records in the present mini-batch
        # ******
        ay_idx_batch = self._ay_mini_batches[num_batch]
        
        # Step 1: Special preparation of the Z-input to the MLP's input Layer L0
        # ******
        # Layer L0: Fill in the input vector for the ANN's input layer L0 
        li_Z_in_layer[0] = self._X_train[ay_idx_batch] # numpy arrays can be indexed by an array of integers
        li_Z_in_layer[0]  = li_Z_in_layer[0].T
        ...
        ...

Hm, pretty simple. But then, what happens if we perform our rather special adding of the bias-neuron row-wise, as we logically are forced to? Remember, the array originally had a shape of (10000, 784) and after transposing a shape of (784, 10000), i.e. the columns then represent the samples of the mini-batch. Well, instead of inserting a row of 10000 data contiguously into memory in one swipe into a C-contiguous array we must hop to the end of each contiguous column of the F-contiguous array “A_out_il” in memory and add one element there. Even if you would optimize it there are many more addresses and steps involved. Can’t become efficient ….

How can we see, which order an array or view onto it follows? We just have to print its “flags“. And I indeed got:

flags li_Z_in[0] =    
  C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : False
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False

Additional tests with Jupyter

Let us extend the tests of our function in the Jupyter cell in the following way to cover a variety of options related to our method of adding bias neurons:

 
# The bias neuron problem 
# ************************
import numpy as np
import scipy
from scipy.special import expit 
import time

''' Method to add values for a bias neuron to A_out - by creating a new C-cont. array '''
def add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C(A, how='column'):
    if how == 'column':
        A_new = np.ones((A.shape[0], A.shape[1]+1), dtype=np.float32)
        A_new[:, 1:] = A
    elif how == 'row':
        A_new = np.ones((A.shape[0]+1, A.shape[1]), dtype=np.float32)
        A_new[1:, :] = A
    return A_new    

''' Method to add values for a bias neuron to A_out - by creating a new F-cont. array '''
def add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F(A, how='column'):
    if how == 'column':
        A_new = np.ones((A.shape[0], A.shape[1]+1), order='F', dtype=np.float32)
        A_new[:, 1:] = A
    elif how == 'row':
        A_new = np.ones((A.shape[0]+1, A.shape[1]), order='F', dtype=np.float32)
        A_new[1:, :] = A
    return A_new    

rg_j = range(50)

li_A = []

t_1 = 0.0; t_2 = 0.0; 
t_3 = 0.0; t_4 = 0.0; 
t_5 = 0.0; t_6 = 0.0; 
t_7 = 0.0; t_8 = 0.0; 

# two types of input shapes 
input_shape1 =(784, 10000)
input_shape2 =(10000, 784)
    

for j in rg_j: 
    
    # For test 1: C-cont. array with shape (784, 10000) 
    # in a MLP programm delivering X_train as (
10000, 784) we would have to (re-)create it 
    # explicitly with the C-order (np.copy or np.asarray)
    ay_inpC = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shape1)*2.0, order='C', dtype=np.float32)
    
    # For test 2: C-cont. array with shape (10000, 784) as it typically is given by a slice of the 
    # original X_train  
    ay_inpC2 = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shape2)*2.0, order='C', dtype=np.float32)
    
    # For tests 3 and 4: transposition - this corresponds to the MLP code   
    ay_inpF = ay_inpC2.T
    
    # For test 5: The original X_train or mini-batch data are somehow given in F-cont.form, 
    # then inpF3 below would hopefully be in C-cont. form        
    ay_inpF2 = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shape2)*2.0, order='F', dtype=np.float32)
    
    # For test 6 
    ay_inpF3 = ay_inpF2.T

    # Test 1:  C-cont. input to add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C - with a shape that fits already
    # ******
    tx = time.perf_counter()
    ay_Cb = add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C(ay_inpC, 'row')
    li_A.append(ay_Cb)
    ty = time.perf_counter(); t_1 += ty - tx; 
    
    # Test 2:  Standard C-cont. input to add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C - but col.-operation due to shape 
    # ******
    tx = time.perf_counter()
    ay_C2b = add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C(ay_inpC2, 'column')
    li_A.append(ay_C2b)
    ty = time.perf_counter(); t_2 += ty - tx; 
    

    # Test 3:  F-cont. input to add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C (!) - but row-operation due to shape 
    # ******   will give us a C-cont. output array which later is used in np.dot() on the left side
    tx = time.perf_counter()
    ay_C3b = add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C(ay_inpF, 'row')
    li_A.append(ay_C3b)
    ty = time.perf_counter(); t_3 += ty - tx; 

    
    # Test 4:  F-cont. input to add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F (!) - but row-operation due to shape 
    # ******   will give us a F-cont. output array which later is used in np.dot() on the left side
    tx = time.perf_counter()
    ay_F4b = add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F(ay_inpF, 'row')
    li_A.append(ay_F4b)
    ty = time.perf_counter(); t_4 += ty - tx; 

    
    # Test 5:  F-cont. input to add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F (!) - but col-operation due to shape 
    # ******   will give us a F-cont. output array with wrong shape for weight matrix 
    tx = time.perf_counter()
    ay_F5b = add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F(ay_inpF2, 'column')
    li_A.append(ay_F5b)
    ty = time.perf_counter(); t_5 += ty - tx; 
    
    # Test 6:  C-cont. input to add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C (!) -  row-operation due to shape 
    # ******   will give us a C-cont. output array with wrong shape for weight matrix 
    tx = time.perf_counter()
    ay_C6b = add_bias_neuron_to_layer_C(ay_inpF3, 'row')
    li_A.append(ay_C6b)
    ty = time.perf_counter(); t_6 += ty - tx; 

    # Test 7:  C-cont. input to add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F (!) -  row-operation due to shape 
    # ******   will give us a F-cont. output array with wrong shape for weight matrix 
    tx = time.perf_counter()
    ay_F7b = add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F(ay_inpC2, 'column')
    li_A.append(ay_F7b)
    ty = time.perf_counter(); t_7 += ty - tx; 
    
    
print("\nTest 1: nbias time C-cont./row with add_.._C() => ", "%10.8f"%t_1)
print("shape_ay_Cb = ", ay_Cb.shape, " flags = \n", ay_Cb.flags)

print("\nTest 2: nbias time C-cont./col with add_.._C() => ", "%10.8f"%t_2)
print("shape of ay_C2b = ", ay_C2b.shape, " flags = \n", ay_C2b.flags)

print("\nTest 3: nbias time F-cont./row with add_.._C() => ", "%10.8f"%t_3)
print("shape of ay_C3b = ", ay_C3b.shape, " flags = \n", ay_C3b.flags)

print("\nTest 4: nbias time F-cont./row with add_.._F() => ", "%10.8f"%t_4)
print("shape of ay_F4b = ", ay_F4b.shape, " flags = \n", ay_F4b.flags)

print("\nTest 5: nbias time F-cont./col 
with add_.._F() => ", "%10.8f"%t_5)
print("shape of ay_F5b = ", ay_F5b.shape, " flags = \n", ay_F5b.flags)

print("\nTest 6: nbias time C-cont./row with add_.._C() => ", "%10.8f"%t_6)
print("shape of ay_C6b = ", ay_C6b.shape, " flags = \n", ay_C6b.flags)

print("\nTest 7: nbias time C-cont./col with add_.._F() => ", "%10.8f"%t_7)
print("shape of ay_F7b = ", ay_F7b.shape, " flags = \n", ay_F7b.flags)

 

You noticed that I defined two different ways of creating the bigger array into which we place the original one.

Results are:

 
Test 1: bias time C-cont./row with add_.._C() =>  0.20854935
shape_ay_Cb =  (785, 10000)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Test 2: bias time C-cont./col with add_.._C() =>  0.25661559
shape of ay_C2b =  (10000, 785)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Test 3: bias time F-cont./row with add_.._C() =>  0.67718296
shape of ay_C3b =  (785, 10000)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Test 4: nbias time F-cont./row with add_.._F() =>  0.25958392
shape of ay_F4b =  (785, 10000)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Test 5: nbias time F-cont./col with add_.._F() =>  0.20990409
shape of ay_F5b =  (10000, 785)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Test 6: nbias time C-cont./row with add_.._C() =>  0.22129941
shape of ay_C6b =  (785, 10000)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Test 7: nbias time C-cont./col with add_.._F() =>  0.67642328
shape of ay_F7b =  (10000, 785)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False

 

These results

  • confirm that it is a bad idea to place a F-contiguous array or (F-contiguous view on an array) into a C-contiguous one the way we presently do it;
  • confirm that we should at least create the surrounding array with the same order as the input array, which we place into it.

The best combinations are

  1. either to put an original C-contiguous array with fitting shape into a C-contiguous one with one more row,
  2. or to place an original F-contiguous array with suitable shape into a F-contiguous one with one more column.

By the way: Some systematic tests also showed that the time difference between the first and the third operation grows with batch size:

bs = 60000, rep. = 30   => t1=0.70, t3=2.91, fact=4.16 
bs = 50000, rep. = 30   => t1=0.58, t3=2.34, fact=4.03 
bs = 40000, rep. = 50   => t1=0.78, t3=3.07, fact=3.91
bs = 30000, rep. = 50   => t1=0.60, t3=2.21, fact=3.68     
bs = 20000, rep. = 60   => t1=0.49, t3=1.63, fact=3.35     
bs = 10000, rep. = 60   => t1=0.26, t3=0.82, fact=3.20     
bs =  5000, rep. = 60   => t1=0.
11, t3=0.35, fact=3.24     
bs =  2000, rep. = 60   => t1=0.04, t3=0.10, fact=2.41     
bs =  1000, rep. = 200  => t1=0.17, t3=0.38, fact=2.21     
bs =   500, rep. = 1000 => t1=0.15, t3=0.32, fact=2.17     
bs =   500, rep. = 200  => t1=0.03, t3=0.06, fact=2.15     
bs =   100, rep. = 1500 => t1=0.04, t3=0.07, fact=1.92 

“rep” is the loop range (repetition), “fact” is the factor between the fastest operation (test1: C-cont. into C-cont.) and the slowest (test3: F-cont. into C-cont). (The best results were selected among multiple runs with different repetitions for the table above).

We clearly see that our problem gets worse with batch sizes above bs=1000!

Problems with shuffling?

Okay, let us assume we wanted to go either of the 2 optimization paths indicated above. Then we would need to prepare the input array in a suitable form. But, how does such an approach fit to the present initialization of the input data and the shuffling of “X_train” at the beginning of each epoch?

If we keep up our policy of adding a bias neuron to the input layer by the mechanism we use we either have to get the transposed view into C-contiguous form or at least create the new array (including the row) in F-contiguous form. (The latter will not hamper the later np.dot()-multiplication with the weight-matrix as we shall see below.) Or we must circumvent the bias neuron problem at the input layer in a different way.

Actually, there are two fast shuffling options – and both are designed to work efficiently with rows, only. Another point is that the result is always C-contiguous. Let us look at some tests:

 
# Shuffling 
# **********
dim1 = 60000
input_shapeX =(dim1, 784)
input_shapeY =(dim1, )

ay_X = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shapeX)*2.0, order='C', dtype=np.float32)
ay_Y = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shapeY)*2.0, order='C', dtype=np.float32)
ay_X2 = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shapeX)*2.0, order='C', dtype=np.float32)
ay_Y2 = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shapeY)*2.0, order='C', dtype=np.float32)

# Test 1: Shuffling of C-cont. array by np.random.shuffle 
tx = time.perf_counter()
np.random.shuffle(ay_X)
np.random.shuffle(ay_Y)
ty = time.perf_counter(); t_1 = ty - tx; 

print("\nShuffle Test 1: time C-cont. => t = ", "%10.8f"%t_1)
print("shape of ay_X = ", ay_X.shape, " flags = \n", ay_X.flags)
print("shape of ay_Y = ", ay_Y.shape, " flags = \n", ay_Y.flags)

# Test 2: Shuffling of C-cont. array by random index permutation  
# as we have coded it for the beginning of each epoch  
tx = time.perf_counter()
shuffled_index = np.random.permutation(dim1)
ay_X2, ay_Y2 = ay_X2[shuffled_index], ay_Y2[shuffled_index]
ty = time.perf_counter(); t_2 = ty - tx; 

print("\nShuffle Test 2: time C-cont. => t = ", "%10.8f"%t_2)
print("shape of ay_X2 = ", ay_X2.shape, " flags = \n", ay_X2.flags)
print("shape of ay_Y2 = ", ay_Y2.shape, " flags = \n", ay_Y2.flags)

# Test3 : Copy Time for writing the whole X-array into 'F' ordered form 
# such that slices transposed get C-order
ay_X3x = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shapeX)*2.0, order='C', dtype=np.float32)
tx = time.perf_counter()
ay_X3 = np.copy(ay_X3x, order='F')
ty = time.perf_counter(); t_3 = ty - tx; 
print("\nTest 3: time to copy to F-cont. array => t = ", "%10.8f"%t_3)
print("shape of ay_X3 = ", ay_X3.shape, " flags = \n", ay_X3.flags)

# Test4 - shuffling of rows in F-cont. array => The result is C-contiguous! 
tx = time.perf_counter()
shuffled_index = np.random.permutation(dim1)
ay_X3, ay_Y2 = ay_X3[shuffled_index], ay_Y2[shuffled_index]
ty = time.perf_counter(); t_4 = ty - tx; 
print("\nTest 4: Shuffle rows of F-
cont. array => t = ", "%10.8f"%t_4)
print("shape of ay_X3 = ", ay_X3.shape, " flags = \n", ay_X3.flags)

# Test 5 - transposing and copying after => F-contiguous with changed shape   
tx = time.perf_counter()
ay_X5 = np.copy(ay_X.T)
ty = time.perf_counter(); t_5 = ty - tx; 
print("\nCopy Test 5: time copy to F-cont. => t = ", "%10.8f"%t_5)
print("shape of ay_X5 = ", ay_X5.shape, " flags = \n", ay_X5.flags)

# Test 6: shuffling columns in F-cont. array
tx = time.perf_counter()
shuffled_index = np.random.permutation(dim1)
ay_X6 = (ay_X5.T[shuffled_index]).T
ty = time.perf_counter(); t_6 = ty - tx; 
print("\nCopy Test 6: shuffling F-cont. array in columns => t = ", "%10.8f"%t_6)
print("shape of ay_X6 = ", ay_X6.shape, " flags = \n", ay_X6.flags)

 

Results are:

 
Shuffle Test 1: time C-cont. => t =  0.08650427
shape of ay_X =  (60000, 784)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False

shape of ay_Y =  (60000,)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Shuffle Test 2: time C-cont. => t =  0.02296818
shape of ay_X2 =  (60000, 784)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False

shape of ay_Y2 =  (60000,)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Test 3: time to copy to F-cont. array => t =  0.09333340
shape of ay_X3 =  (60000, 784)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Test 4: Shuffle rows of F-cont. array => t =  0.25790425
shape of ay_X3 =  (60000, 784)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Copy Test 5: time copy to F-cont. => t =  0.02146052
shape of ay_X5 =  (784, 60000)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


Copy Test 6: shuffling F-cont. array in columns by using the transposed view => t =  0.02402249
shape of ay_X6 =  (784, 60000)  flags = 
   C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : False
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False

 

The results reveal three points:

  • Applying a random permutation of an index is faster than using np.random.shuffle() on the array.
  • The result is C-contiguous in both cases.
  • Shuffling of columns can be done in a fast way by shuffling rows of the transposed array.

So, at the beginning of each epoch we are in any case confronted with a C-contiguous array of shape (batch_size, 784). Comparing this with the test data further above seems to leave us with three choices:

  • Approach 1: At the beginning of each epoch we copy the input array into a F-contiguous one, such that the required transposed array afterwards is C-contiguous and our present version of “_add_bias_neuron_to_layer()” works fast with adding a row of bias nodes. The result
    would be a C-contiguous array with shape (785, size_batch).
  • Approach 2: We define a new method “_add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F()” which creates an F-contiguous array with an extra row into which we fit the existing (transposed) array “A_out_il”. The result would be a F-contiguous array with shape (785, size_batch).
  • Approach 3: We skip adding a row for bias neurons altogether.

The first method has the disadvantage that the copy-process requires time itself at the beginning of each epoch. But according to the test data the total gain would be bigger than the loss (6 batches!). The second approach has a small disadvantage because “_add_bias_neuron_to_layer_F()” is slightly slower than its row oriented counterpart – but this will be compensated by a slightly faster matrix dot()-multiplication. All in all the second option seems to be the better one – in case we do not find a completely different approach. Just wait a minute …

Intermezzo: Matrix multiplication np.dot() applied to C- and/or F-contiguous arrays

As we have come so far: How does np.dot() react to C- or F-contiguous arrays? The first two optimization approaches would end in different situations regarding the matrix multiplication. Let us cover all 4 possible combinations by some test:

 
# A simple test on np.dot() on C-contiguous and F-contiguous matrices
# *******************************************************
# Is the dot() multiplication fasterfor certain combinations of C- and F-contiguous matrices?  

input_shape =(800, 20000)
ay_inpC1 = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shape)*2.0, dtype=np.float32 )
#print("shape of ay_inpC1 = ", ay_inpC1.shape, " flags = ", ay_inpC1.flags)
ay_inpC2 = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shape)*2.0, dtype=np.float32 )
#print("shape of ay_inpC2 = ", ay_inpC2.shape, " flags = ", ay_inpC2.flags)
ay_inpC3 = np.array(np.random.random_sample(input_shape)*2.0, dtype=np.float32 )
print("shape of ay_inpC3 = ", ay_inpC3.shape, " flags = ", ay_inpC3.flags)

ay_inpF1 = np.copy(ay_inpC1, order='F')
ay_inpF2 = np.copy(ay_inpC2, order='F')
ay_inpF3 = np.copy(ay_inpC3, order='F')
print("shape of ay_inpF3 = ", ay_inpF3.shape, " flags = ", ay_inpF3.flags)

weight_shape =(101, 800)
weightC = np.array(np.random.random_sample(weight_shape)*0.5, dtype=np.float32)
print("shape of weightC = ", weightC.shape, " flags = ", weightC.flags)
weightF = np.copy(weightC, order='F')
print("shape of weightF = ", weightF.shape, " flags = ", weightF.flags)

rg_j = range(300)


ts = time.perf_counter()
for j in rg_j:
    resCC1 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpC1)
    resCC2 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpC2)
    resCC3 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpC3)
    resCC1 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpC1)
    resCC2 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpC2)
    resCC3 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpC3)
te = time.perf_counter(); tcc = te - ts; print("\n dot tCC time = ", "%10.8f"%tcc)


ts = time.perf_counter()
for j in rg_j:
    resCF1 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpF1)
    resCF2 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpF2)
    resCF3 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpF3)
    resCF1 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpF1)
    resCF2 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpF2)
    resCF3 = np.dot(weightC, ay_inpF3)
te = time.perf_counter(); tcf = te - ts; print("\n dot tCF time = ", "%10.8f"%tcf)

ts = time.perf_counter()
for j in rg_j:
    resF1 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpC1)
    resF2 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpC2)
    resF3 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpC3)
    resF1 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpC1)
    resF2 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpC2)
    resF3 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpC3)
te = time.perf_counter(); tfc = te - ts; print("\n dot tFC time = ", "%10.8f"%tfc)

ts = time.
perf_counter()
for j in rg_j:
    resF1 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpF1)
    resF2 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpF2)
    resF3 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpF3)
    resF1 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpF1)
    resF2 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpF2)
    resF3 = np.dot(weightF, ay_inpF3)
te = time.perf_counter(); tff = te - ts; print("\n dot tFF time = ", "%10.8f"%tff)


 

The results show some differences – but they are relatively small:

 
shape of ay_inpC3 =  (800, 20000)  flags =    C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False

shape of ay_inpF3 =  (800, 20000)  flags =    C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False

shape of weightC =  (101, 800)  flags =    C_CONTIGUOUS : True
  F_CONTIGUOUS : False
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False

shape of weightF =  (101, 800)  flags =    C_CONTIGUOUS : False
  F_CONTIGUOUS : True
  OWNDATA : True
  WRITEABLE : True
  ALIGNED : True
  WRITEBACKIFCOPY : False
  UPDATEIFCOPY : False


 dot tCC time =  21.77729867

 dot tCF time =  20.68745600

 dot tFC time =  21.42704156

 dot tFF time =  20.65543837

 
Actually, most of the tiny differences comes from putting the matrix into a fitting order. This is something Numpy.dot() performs automatically; see the documentation. The matrix operation is fastest for the second matrix being in F-order, but the difference is nothing to worry about at our present discussion level.

Avoiding the bias problem at the input layer

We could now apply one of the two strategies to improve our mechanism of dealing with the bias nodes at the input layer. You would notice a significant acceleration there. But you leave the other layers unchanged. Why?

The reason is quite simple: The matrix multiplications with the weight matrix – done by “np.dot()” – produces the C-contiguous arrays at later layers with the required shapes! E.g., an input array at layer L1 of the suitable shape (70, 10000). So, we can for the moment leave everything at the hidden layers and at the output layer untouched.

However, the discussion above made one thing clear: The whole approach of how we technically treat bias nodes is to be criticized. Can we at least go another way at the input layer?

Yes, we can. Without touching the weight matrix connecting the layers L0 and L1. We need to get rid of unnecessary or inefficient operations in the training loop, but we can afford some bigger operations during the setup of the input data. What, if we added the required bias values already to the input data array?

This would require a column operation on a transposition of the whole dataset “X”. But, we need to perform this operation only once – and before splitting the data set into training and test sets! As a MLP generally works with flattened data such an approach should work for other datasets, too.

Measurements show that adding a bias column will cost us between 0.030 and 0.035 secs. A worthy one time investment! Think about it: We would not need to touch our already fast methods of shuffling and slicing to get the batches – and even the transposed matrix would already have the preferred F-contiguous order for np.dot()! The required code changes are minimal; we just need to adapt our methods “_handle_input_data()” and “_fw_propagation()” by two, three lines:

 
    ''' -- Method to handle different types of input data sets 
           Currently only 
different MNIST sets are supported 
           We can also IMPORT a preprocessed MIST data set --''' 
    def _handle_input_data(self):    
        '''
        Method to deal with the input data: 
        - check if we have a known data set ("mnist" so far)
        - reshape as required 
        - analyze dimensions and extract the feature dimension(s) 
        '''
        # check for known dataset 
        try: 
            if (self._my_data_set not in self._input_data_sets ): 
                raise ValueError
        except ValueError:
            print("The requested input data" + self._my_data_set + " is not known!" )
            sys.exit()   
        
        # MNIST datasets 
        # **************
        
        # handle the mnist original dataset - is not supported any more 
        if ( self._my_data_set == "mnist"): 
            mnist = fetch_mldata('MNIST original')
            self._X, self._y = mnist["data"], mnist["target"]
            print("Input data for dataset " + self._my_data_set + " : \n" + "Original shape of X = " + str(self._X.shape) +
        #      "\n" + "Original shape of y = " + str(self._y.shape))
        #
        # handle the mnist_784 dataset 
        if ( self._my_data_set == "mnist_784"): 
            mnist2 = fetch_openml('mnist_784', version=1, cache=True, data_home='~/scikit_learn_data') 
            self._X, self._y = mnist2["data"], mnist2["target"]
            print ("data fetched")
            # the target categories are given as strings not integers 
            self._y = np.array([int(i) for i in self._y], dtype=np.float32)
            print ("data modified")
            print("Input data for dataset " + self._my_data_set + " : \n" + "Original shape of X = " + str(self._X.shape) +
              "\n" + "Original shape of y = " + str(self._y.shape))
            
        # handle the mnist_keras dataset - PREFERRED 
        if ( self._my_data_set == "mnist_keras"): 
            (X_train, y_train), (X_test, y_test) = kmnist.load_data()
            len_train =  X_train.shape[0]
            len_test  =  X_test.shape[0]
            X_train = X_train.reshape(len_train, 28*28) 
            X_test  = X_test.reshape(len_test, 28*28) 
            
            # Concatenation required due to possible later normalization of all data
            self._X = np.concatenate((X_train, X_test), axis=0)
            self._y = np.concatenate((y_train, y_test), axis=0)
            print("Input data for dataset " + self._my_data_set + " : \n" + "Original shape of X = " + str(self._X.shape) +
              "\n" + "Original shape of y = " + str(self._y.shape))
        #
        # common MNIST handling 
        if ( self._my_data_set == "mnist" or self._my_data_set == "mnist_784" or self._my_data_set == "mnist_keras" ): 
            self._common_handling_of_mnist()
        
        # handle IMPORTED MNIST datasets (could in later versions also be used for other dtaasets
        # **************************+++++
            # Note: Imported sets are e.g. useful for testing some new preprocessing in a Jupyter environment before implementing related new methods
        if ( self._my_data_set == "imported"): 
            if (self._X_import is not None) and (self._y_import is not None):
                self._X = self._X_import
                self._y = self._y_import
            else:
                print("Shall handle imported datasets - but they are not defined")
                sys.exit() 
        #
        # number of total records in X, y
        self._dim_X = self._X.shape[0]
            
        # ************************
        # Common dataset handling 
        # ************************

        # transform to 32 bit 
        # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        self._X = self._X.astype(np.
float32)
        self._y = self._y.astype(np.int32)
                
        # Give control to preprocessing - Note: preproc. includes also normalization
        # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        self._preprocess_input_data()   # scaling, PCA, cluster detection .... 
        
        # ADDING A COLUMN FOR BIAS NEURONS  
        # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        self._X = self._add_bias_neuron_to_layer(self._X, 'column')
        print("type of self._X = ", self._X.dtype, "  flags = ", self._X.flags)
        print("type of self._y = ", self._y.dtype)
        
        # mixing the training indices - MUST happen BEFORE encoding
        # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
        shuffled_index = np.random.permutation(self._dim_X)
        self._X, self._y = self._X[shuffled_index], self._y[shuffled_index]
        
        # Splitting into training and test datasets 
        # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        if self._num_test_records > 0.25 * self._dim_X:
            print("\nNumber of test records bigger than 25% of available data. Too big, we stop." )
            sys.exit()
        else:
            num_sep = self._dim_X - self._num_test_records
            self._X_train, self._X_test, self._y_train, self._y_test = self._X[:num_sep], self._X[num_sep:], self._y[:num_sep], self._y[num_sep:] 
 
        # numbers, dimensions
        # *********************
        self._dim_sets = self._y_train.shape[0]
        self._dim_features = self._X_train.shape[1] 
        print("\nFinal dimensions of training and test datasets of type " + self._my_data_set + 
              " : \n" + "Shape of X_train = " + str(self._X_train.shape) + 
              "\n" + "Shape of y_train = " + str(self._y_train.shape) + 
              "\n" + "Shape of X_test = " + str(self._X_test.shape) + 
              "\n" + "Shape of y_test = " + str(self._y_test.shape) 
              )
        print("\nWe have " + str(self._dim_sets) + " data records for training") 
        print("Feature dimension is " + str(self._dim_features)) 
       
        # Encode the y-target labels = categories // MUST happen AFTER encoding 
        # **************************
        self._get_num_labels()
        self._encode_all_y_labels(self._b_print_test_data)
        #
        return None
.....
.....
    ''' -- Method to handle FW propagation for a mini-batch --'''
    def _fw_propagation(self, li_Z_in, li_A_out):
        ''' 
        Parameter: 
        li_Z_in :   list of input values at all layers  - li_Z_in[0] is already filled - 
                    other elements of this list are to be filled during FW-propagation
        li_A_out:   list of output values at all layers - to be filled during FW-propagation
        '''
        
        # index range for all layers 
        #    Note that we count from 0 (0=>L0) to E L(=>E) / 
        #    Careful: during BW-propagation we need a clear indexing of the lists filled during FW-propagation
        ilayer = range(0, self._n_total_layers-1)
        
        # do not change if you use vstack - shape may vary for predictions - cannot take self._no_ones yet  
        # np_bias = np.ones((1,li_Z_in[0].shape[1]))

        # propagation loop
        # ***************
        for il in ilayer:
            
            # Step 1: Take input of last layer and apply activation function 
            # ******
            #ts=time.perf_counter()
            if il == 0: 
                A_out_il = li_Z_in[il] # L0: activation function is identity !!!
            else: 
                A_out_il = self._act_func( li_Z_in[il] ) # use real activation function 
            
            # Step 2: Add bias node
            # ****** 
            # As we have taken care of this for the input layer already at data setup we 
perform this only for hidden layers 
            if il > 0: 
                A_out_il = self._add_bias_neuron_to_layer(A_out_il, 'row')
            li_A_out[il] = A_out_il    # save data for the BW propagation 
            
            # Step 3: Propagate by matrix operation
            # ****** 
            Z_in_ilp1 = np.dot(self._li_w[il], A_out_il) 
            li_Z_in[il+1] = Z_in_ilp1
        
        # treatment of the last layer 
        # ***************************
        il = il + 1
        A_out_il = self._out_func( li_Z_in[il] ) # use the output function 
        li_A_out[il] = A_out_il   # save data for the BW propagation 
        
        return None

 
The required change of the first method consists of adding just one effective line

      
        self._X = self._add_bias_neuron_to_layer(self._X, 'column') 

Note that I added the column for the bias values after pre-processing. The bias neurons – more precisely – their constant values should not be regarded or included in clustering, PCA, normalization or whatever other things we do ahead of training.

In the second method we just had to eliminate a statement and add a condition, which excludes the input layer from an (additional) bias neuron treatment. That is all we need to do.

Improvements ???

How much of an improvement can we expect? Assuming that the forward propagation consumes around 40% of the total computational time of an epoch, and taking the introductory numbers we would say that we should gain something like 0.40*0.43*100 %, i.e. 17.2%. However, this too much as the basic effect of our change varies non-linearly with the batch-size.

So, something around a 15% reduction of the CPU time for a training run with 35 epochs and a batch size of only 500 would be great.

However, we should expect a much bigger effect on the FW-propagation of the complete training set (though the test data set may be more interesting otherwise). OK, let us do 2 test runs – the first without a special verification of the accuracy on the training set, the second with a verification of the accuracy via propagating the training set at the end of each and every epoch.

Results of the first run:

------------------
Starting epoch 35

Time_CPU for epoch 35 0.2717692229998647
Total CPU-time:  9.625694645001204

learning rate =  0.0009994051838157095

total costs of training set   =  -1.0
rel. reg. contrib. to total costs =  -1.0

total costs of last mini_batch   =  65.10513
rel. reg. contrib. to batch costs =  0.121494114

mean abs weight at L0 :  -10.0
mean abs weight at L1 :  -10.0
mean abs weight at L2 :  -10.0

avg total error of last mini_batch =  0.00805
presently batch averaged accuracy   =  0.99247

-------------------
Total training Time_CPU:  9.625974849001068

And the second run gives us :

------------------
Starting epoch 35

Time_CPU for epoch 35 0.37750117799805594
Total CPU-time:  13.164013020999846

learning rate =  0.0009994051838157095

total costs of training set   =  5929.9297
rel. reg. contrib. to total costs =  0.0013557569

total costs of last mini_batch   =  50.148125
rel. reg. contrib. to batch costs =  0.16029811

mean abs weight at L0 :  0.064023666
mean abs weight at L1 :  0.38064405
mean abs weight at L2 :  1.320015

avg total error of last mini_batch =  0.00626
presently reached train accuracy   =  0.99045
presently batch averaged accuracy   =  0.99267


-------------------
Total training Time_CPU:  13.16432525900018

The small deviation of the accuracy values determined by error averaging over batches vs. the test on the complete training set stems from slightly different measurement methods as discussed in the first sections of this article.

What do our results mean with respect to performance?
Well, we went down from 11.33 secs to 9.63 secs for the CPU time of the training run. This is a fair 15% improvement. But remember that we came from something like 50 secs at the beginning of our optimization, so all in all we have gained an improvement by a factor of 5 already!

In our last article we found a factor of 1.68 between the runs with a full propagation of the complete training set at each and every epoch for accuracy evaluation. Such a run lasted roughly for 19 secs. We now went down to 13.16 secs. Meaning: Instead of 7.7 secs we only consumed 3.5 secs for propagating all 60000 samples 35 times in one sweep.

We reduced the CPU time for the FW propagation of the training set (plus error evaluation) by 54%, i.e. by more than a factor of 2! Meaning: We have really achieved something for the FW-propagation of big batches!

By the way: Checking accuracy on the test dataset instead on the training dataset after each and every epoch requires 10.15 secs.

------------------
Starting epoch 35

Time_CPU for epoch 35 0.29742689200065797
Total CPU-time:  10.150781942997128

learning rate =  0.0009994051838157095

total costs of training set   =  -1.0
rel. reg. contrib. to total costs =  -1.0

total costs of last mini_batch   =  73.17834
rel. reg. contrib. to batch costs =  0.10932728

mean abs weight at L0 :  -10.0
mean abs weight at L1 :  -10.0
mean abs weight at L2 :  -10.0

avg total error of last mini_batch =  0.00804
presently reached test accuracy    =  0.96290
presently batch averaged accuracy   =  0.99269


-------------------
Total training Time_CPU:  10.1510079389991 

You see the variation in the accuracy values.

Eventually, I give you run times for 35 epochs of the MLP for larger batch sizes:

bs = 500   => t(35) = 9.63 secs 
bs = 5000  => t(35) = 8.75 secs
bs = 10000 => t(35) = 8.55 secs
bs = 20000 => t(35) = 8.68 secs
bs = 30000 => t(35) = 8.65 secs

So, we get not below a certain value – despite the fact that FW-propagation gets faster with batch-size. So, we have some more batch-size dependent impediments in the BW-propagation, too, which compensate our gains.

Plots

Just to show that our modified program still produces reasonable results after 650 training steps – here the plot and result data :

------------------
Starting epoch 651
....
....
avg total error of last mini_batch =  0.00878
presently reached train accuracy   =  0.99498
presently reached test accuracy    =  0.97740
presently batch averaged accuracy   =  0.99214
-------------------
Total training Time_CPU:  257.541123711002

The total time was to be expected as we checked accuracy values at each and every epoch both for the complete training and the test datasets (635/35*14 = 260 secs = 2.3 min!).

Conclusion

This was a funny ride today. We found a major
impediment for a fast FW-propagation. We determined its cause in the inefficient combination of two differently ordered matrices which we used to account for bias nodes in the input layer. We investigated some optimization options for our present approach regarding bias neurons at layer L0. But it was much more reasonable to circumvent the whole problem by adding bias values already to the input array itself. This gave us a significant improvement for the FW-propagation of big batches – roughly by a factor of 2.5 for the complete training data set as an extreme example. But also testing accuracy on the full test data set at each and every epoch is no major performance factor any longer.

However, our whole analysis showed that we must put a big question mark behind our present approach to bias neurons. But before we attack this problem, we shall take a closer look at BW-propagation in the next article:

MLP, Numpy, TF2 – performance issues – Step III – a correction to BW propagation

And there we shall replace another stupid time wasting part of the code, too. It will give us another improvement of around 15% to 20%. Stay tuned …

Links

Performance of class methods vs. pure Python functions
stackoverflow : how-much-slower-python-classes-are-compared-to-their-equivalent-functions

Shuffle columns?
stackoverflow: shuffle-columns-of-an-array-with-numpy

Numpy arrays or matrices?
stackoverflow : numpy-np-array-versus-np-matrix-performance