Run this notebook: Open in Colab Open in Kaggle

Basic Operations in TensorFlow

Credits: Forked from TensorFlow-Examples by Aymeric Damien

TensorFlow is an open-source framework for numerical computation that represents calculations as a computational graph – a network of nodes (operations) connected by edges (tensors, i.e., multi-dimensional arrays). Understanding basic operations like constants, placeholders, and matrix multiplication is essential because every neural network, no matter how complex, is ultimately built from these primitives. Constants hold fixed values, placeholders accept input data at runtime via feed_dict, and tf.matmul performs the matrix multiplications that are the backbone of every neural network layer.

Note: This notebook uses TensorFlow 1.x syntax with Session and placeholder. Modern TensorFlow 2.x uses eager execution by default, eliminating the need for sessions. The core concepts of tensors and operations remain the same.

Setup: Refer to the setup instructions

import tensorflow as tf

# Basic constant operations
# The value returned by the constructor represents the output
# of the Constant op.
a = tf.constant(2)
b = tf.constant(3)

# Launch the default graph.
with tf.Session() as sess:
    print "a=2, b=3"
    print "Addition with constants: %i" % sess.run(a+b)
    print "Multiplication with constants: %i" % sess.run(a*b)

# Basic Operations with variable as graph input
# The value returned by the constructor represents the output
# of the Variable op. (define as input when running session)
# tf Graph input
a = tf.placeholder(tf.int16)
b = tf.placeholder(tf.int16)

# Define some operations
add = tf.add(a, b)
mul = tf.mul(a, b)

# Launch the default graph.
with tf.Session() as sess:
    # Run every operation with variable input
    print "Addition with variables: %i" % sess.run(add, feed_dict={a: 2, b: 3})
    print "Multiplication with variables: %i" % sess.run(mul, feed_dict={a: 2, b: 3})

# ----------------
# More in details:
# Matrix Multiplication from TensorFlow official tutorial

# Create a Constant op that produces a 1x2 matrix.  The op is
# added as a node to the default graph.
#
# The value returned by the constructor represents the output
# of the Constant op.
matrix1 = tf.constant([[3., 3.]])

# Create another Constant that produces a 2x1 matrix.
matrix2 = tf.constant([[2.],[2.]])

# Create a Matmul op that takes 'matrix1' and 'matrix2' as inputs.
# The returned value, 'product', represents the result of the matrix
# multiplication.
product = tf.matmul(matrix1, matrix2)

# To run the matmul op we call the session 'run()' method, passing 'product'
# which represents the output of the matmul op.  This indicates to the call
# that we want to get the output of the matmul op back.
#
# All inputs needed by the op are run automatically by the session.  They
# typically are run in parallel.
#
# The call 'run(product)' thus causes the execution of threes ops in the
# graph: the two constants and matmul.
#
# The output of the op is returned in 'result' as a numpy `ndarray` object.
with tf.Session() as sess:
    result = sess.run(product)
    print result