ValueError: setting an array element with a sequence in Python

Question

First off, here's my code:

"""Softmax."""

scores = [3.0, 1.0, 0.2]

import numpy as np

def softmax(x):
    """Compute softmax values for each sets of scores in x."""
    num = np.exp(x)
    score_len = len(x)
    y = np.array([0]*score_len)
    sum_n = np.sum(num)
    #print sum_n
    for index in range(1,score_len):
        y[index] = (num[index])/sum_n
    return y

print(softmax(scores))

The error comes up at the line:

y[index] = (num[index])/sum_n

I run the code with:

# Plot softmax curves
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = np.arange(-2.0, 6.0, 0.1)
scores = np.vstack([x, np.ones_like(x), 0.2 * np.ones_like(x)])

plt.plot(x, softmax(scores).T, linewidth=2)
plt.show()

What exactly is going wrong here?

Answer 1

Just editing a print statement as "debugger" reveals what is happening:

import numpy as np

def softmax(x):
    """Compute softmax values for each sets of scores in x."""
    num = np.exp(x)
    score_len = len(x)
    y = np.array([0]*score_len)
    sum_n = np.sum(num)
    #print sum_n
    for index in range(1,score_len):
        print((num[index])/sum_n)
        y[index] = (num[index])/sum_n
    return y

x = np.arange(-2.0, 6.0, 0.1)
scores = np.vstack([x, np.ones_like(x), 0.2 * np.ones_like(x)])
softmax(scores).T

this prints

[ 0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504  0.00065504
  0.00065504  0.00065504]

so you are trying to assign this array to one element of another array. Which is not allowed!

There are several ways to do it so that it is working. Just changing

y = np.array([0]*score_len)

to a multidimensional array would work:

y = np.zeros(score.shape)

That should do the trick but I'm not sure if it's what you intended.

---

EDIT:

It seems you did not want multidimensional input so you just need to change:

scores = np.vstack([x, np.ones_like(x), 0.2 * np.ones_like(x)])

to

scores = np.hstack([x, np.ones_like(x), 0.2 * np.ones_like(x)])

verify the shape of these arrays by printing scores.shape really helps you find such errors by yourself. The first one stacks along the first axis (vstack) and the hstack by the zeroth-axis (which is what you want)