Newbie question: panic: mat: zero length in matrix dimension - Neural Networks

I am following in the first steps of O’reilly’s book on Machine Learning with Go, I am learning and there is something that confuses me and I do not know what may be happening.

I run the code to train a neural network and I have a warning that the matrix is of zero length, I don’t know what happens because I am using that matrix of zeros in the output variable of the neural network.

package main

import (
    "errors"
    "fmt"
    "log"
    "math"
    "math/rand"
    "time"

    "gonum.org/v1/gonum/floats"
    "gonum.org/v1/gonum/mat"
)

// sumAlongAxis sums a matrix along a
// particular dimension, preserving the
// other dimension.
func sumAlongAxis(axis int, m *mat.Dense) (*mat.Dense, error) {

    numRows, numCols := m.Dims()

    var output *mat.Dense

    switch axis {
    case 0:
        data := make([]float64, numCols)
        for i := 0; i < numCols; i++ {
            col := mat.Col(nil, i, m)
            data[i] = floats.Sum(col)
        }
        output = mat.NewDense(1, numCols, data)
    case 1:
        data := make([]float64, numRows)
        for i := 0; i < numRows; i++ {
            row := mat.Row(nil, i, m)
            data[i] = floats.Sum(row)
        }
        output = mat.NewDense(numRows, 1, data)
    default:
        return nil, errors.New("invalid axis, must be 0 or 1")
    }

    return output, nil
}

// sigmoid implements the sigmoid function
// for use in activation functions.
func sigmoid(x float64) float64 {
    return 1.0 / (1.0 + math.Exp(-x))
}

// sigmoidPrime implements the derivative
// of the sigmoid function for backpropagation.
func sigmoidPrime(x float64) float64 {
    return x * (1.0 - x)
}

// neuralNet contains all of the information
// that defines a trained neural network.
type neuralNet struct {
    config  neuralNetConfig
    wHidden *mat.Dense
    bHidden *mat.Dense
    wOut    *mat.Dense
    bOut    *mat.Dense
}

// neuralNetConfig defines our neural network
// architecture and learning parameters.
type neuralNetConfig struct {
    inputNeurons  int
    outputNeurons int
    hiddenNeurons int
    numEpochs     int
    learningRate  float64
}

// NewNetwork initializes a new neural network.
func newNetwork(config neuralNetConfig) *neuralNet {
    return &neuralNet{config: config}
}

// Train trains a neural network using backpropagation.
func (nn *neuralNet) train(x, y *mat.Dense) error {
    // Initialize biases/weights.
    randSource := rand.NewSource(time.Now().UnixNano())
    randGen := rand.New(randSource)

    wHiddenRaw := make([]float64, nn.config.hiddenNeurons*nn.config.inputNeurons)
    bHiddenRaw := make([]float64, nn.config.hiddenNeurons)
    wOutRaw := make([]float64, nn.config.outputNeurons*nn.config.hiddenNeurons)
    bOutRaw := make([]float64, nn.config.outputNeurons)

    for _, param := range [][]float64{wHiddenRaw, bHiddenRaw, wOutRaw, bOutRaw} {
        for i := range param {
            param[i] = randGen.Float64()
        }
    }

    wHidden := mat.NewDense(nn.config.inputNeurons, nn.config.hiddenNeurons, wHiddenRaw)
    bHidden := mat.NewDense(1, nn.config.hiddenNeurons, bHiddenRaw)
    wOut := mat.NewDense(nn.config.hiddenNeurons, nn.config.outputNeurons, wOutRaw)
    bOut := mat.NewDense(1, nn.config.outputNeurons, bOutRaw)

    // Define the output of the neural network.
    output := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)

    // Loop over the number of epochs utilizing
    // backpropagation to train our model.
    for i := 0; i < nn.config.numEpochs; i++ {

        // Complete the feed forward process.
        hiddenLayerInput := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        hiddenLayerInput.Mul(x, wHidden)
        addBHidden := func(_, col int, v float64) float64 { return v + bHidden.At(0, col) }
        hiddenLayerInput.Apply(addBHidden, hiddenLayerInput)

        hiddenLayerActivations := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        applySigmoid := func(_, _ int, v float64) float64 { return sigmoid(v) }
        hiddenLayerActivations.Apply(applySigmoid, hiddenLayerInput)

        outputLayerInput := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        outputLayerInput.Mul(hiddenLayerActivations, wOut)
        addBOut := func(_, col int, v float64) float64 { return v + bOut.At(0, col) }
        outputLayerInput.Apply(addBOut, outputLayerInput)
        output.Apply(applySigmoid, outputLayerInput)

        // Complete the backpropagation.
        networkError := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        networkError.Sub(y, output)

        slopeOutputLayer := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        applySigmoidPrime := func(_, _ int, v float64) float64 { return sigmoidPrime(v) }
        slopeOutputLayer.Apply(applySigmoidPrime, output)
        slopeHiddenLayer := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        slopeHiddenLayer.Apply(applySigmoidPrime, hiddenLayerActivations)

        dOutput := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        dOutput.MulElem(networkError, slopeOutputLayer)
        errorAtHiddenLayer := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        errorAtHiddenLayer.Mul(dOutput, wOut.T())

        dHiddenLayer := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        dHiddenLayer.MulElem(errorAtHiddenLayer, slopeHiddenLayer)

        // Adjust the parameters.
        wOutAdj := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        wOutAdj.Mul(hiddenLayerActivations.T(), dOutput)
        wOutAdj.Scale(nn.config.learningRate, wOutAdj)
        wOut.Add(wOut, wOutAdj)

        bOutAdj, err := sumAlongAxis(0, dOutput)
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
        bOutAdj.Scale(nn.config.learningRate, bOutAdj)
        bOut.Add(bOut, bOutAdj)

        wHiddenAdj := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)
        wHiddenAdj.Mul(x.T(), dHiddenLayer)
        wHiddenAdj.Scale(nn.config.learningRate, wHiddenAdj)
        wHidden.Add(wHidden, wHiddenAdj)

        bHiddenAdj, err := sumAlongAxis(0, dHiddenLayer)
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
        bHiddenAdj.Scale(nn.config.learningRate, bHiddenAdj)
        bHidden.Add(bHidden, bHiddenAdj)
    }

    nn.wHidden = wHidden
    nn.bHidden = bHidden
    nn.wOut = wOut
    nn.bOut = bOut

    return nil

}

func main() {
    // Define our input attributes.
    input := mat.NewDense(3, 4, []float64{
        1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0,
        1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0,
        0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0,
    })

    // Define our labels.
    labels := mat.NewDense(3, 1, []float64{1.0, 1.0, 0.0})

    // Define our network architecture and
    // learning parameters.
    config := neuralNetConfig{
        inputNeurons:  4,
        outputNeurons: 1,
        hiddenNeurons: 3,
        numEpochs:     5000,
        learningRate:  0.3,
    }

    // Train the neural network.
    network := newNetwork(config)
    if err := network.train(input, labels); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // Output the weights that define our network!
    f := mat.Formatted(network.wHidden, mat.Prefix(" "))
    fmt.Printf("\nwHidden = % v\n\n", f)

    f = mat.Formatted(network.bHidden, mat.Prefix(" "))
    fmt.Printf("\nbHidden = % v\n\n", f)

    f = mat.Formatted(network.wOut, mat.Prefix(" "))
    fmt.Printf("\nwOut = % v\n\n", f)

    f = mat.Formatted(network.bOut, mat.Prefix(" "))
    fmt.Printf("\nbOut = % v\n\n", f)
}

I recieve this feedback:

panic: mat: zero length in matrix dimension

goroutine 1 [running]:
gonum.org/v1/gonum/mat.NewDense(...)
C:/Users/fabri/go/pkg/mod/gonum.org/v1/gonum@v0.9.2/mat/dense.go:50
main.(*neuralNet).train(0xc00010ff30, 0xc000024080, 0xc0000240c0, 0x8f3bc0, 0x952088)
D:/Tech/go/src/go-text-classification/main.go:106 +0x870
main.main()
D:/Tech/go/src/go-text-classification/main.go:204 +0x2a5

I would appreciate your help with that in advance.

Hi @fabricioism, welcome to the Go forum.

It looks like the panic is expected.

The stack trace points to line 106 in your code, which is:

output := mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)

mat.NewDense() panics if either of the two size parameters is zero, according to the documentation.

The book you mention is from 2017, and NewDense() did not panic on zero sizes until 2018. This explains why the book suggests mat.NewDense(0, 0, nil)– simply because the author was still able to use NewDense in this way back in 2017.

Try using

output := &mat.Dense{}

instead. This might work as all Dense operations that your code calls directly after each NewDense(0, 0, nil) seem to resize the matrix anyway, by calling the internal method reuseAsNonZeroed().

Disclaimer - I am quite the opposite of a gonum expert. I am purely making assumptions after peeking into their code here and there. Hence YMMV.

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