Hello,
This is a follow on for issue 8139
<https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/8139>. I propose adding elementwise
addition and subtraction functionality to einsum. I love einsum as it
clearly and concisely defines complex linear algebra. However elementwise
addition is a very common linear algebra operation and einsum does not
currently support it. The Einstein field equations
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations#Mathematical_form>,
what the notation was originally developed to document, contain that
functionality. It is fairly common in stress analysis (my background), for
example see these lectures notes
<http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Engineering/Courses/En221/Notes/Index_notation/Index_notation.htm>
.
Specifically I propose adding "+" and "-" characters which separate current
einsum statements which are then combined elementwise. An example is A =
np.einsum('ij,jk+ij,jk', B, C, D, E), which is A = B * C + D * E. I wrote
a crude function
<https://github.com/mattharrigan/numpy/blob/einsum-elementwise/numpy/core/einsum_extension.py>
to demonstrate the functionality.
I believe the functionality is useful, in keeping with the spirit of a
clean concise API, and doesn't break the existing API, which could warrant
acceptance.
Additionally I believe it opens the possibility of many interesting
performance optimizations. For instance, many of the optimizations in this
NEP <http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/neps/deferred-ufunc-evaluation.html>
could be done internally to the einsum function, which may be easier to
accomplish given the narrower scope (but I am ignorant of all the low level
C internals of numpy). The example in the beginning could become A =
np.einsum('...+...+...', B, C, D).
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Matt
_______________________________________________
NumPy-Discussion mailing list
NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org
https://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
