A primer to vector computing
Vector computing is about efficiently performing mathematical operations on numerical arrays. Many problems in science and engineering actually consist of a sequence of such operations.
This section introduces and demonstrates the multidimensional array data type for numerical computing.
Multidimensional arrays
What is a multidimensional array? Consider a vector containing 1000 real numbers. It has one dimension, since numbers are stored along a single axis. Now, consider a matrix with 1000 rows and 1000 columns. It contains 1,000,000 numbers. Because it has two dimensions, you need to specify both the row and column to refer to a specific number.
More generally, an n-dimensional array, also called ndarray, is an n-dimensional matrix (or tensor). Every number is identified by n indices (i_1, ... i_n).
Many types of real-world data can be represented as ndarrays:
- The evolution of a stock exchange price is a 1D array (vector) with one value per day (or per hour, per...
