# How to implement a recurrent neural network Part 2

This page is part of a 2 part tutorial on how to implement a recurrent neural network model. You can find the links to the pages of this tutorial here:

## Binary addition with a non-linear RNN ¶

This part will cover:

While the first part of this tutorial described a simple linear recurrent network, this tutorial will describe an RNN with non-linear transfer functions that is able to learn how to perform binary addition from examples.

First we import the libraries we need and define the dataset.

In [1]:

## Dataset ¶

This tutorial uses a dataset of 2000 training samples to train the RNN that can be created with the  create_dataset  method defined below. Each sample consists of two 6-bit input numbers ($x_{i1}$, $x_{i2}$) padded with a 0 to make it 7 characters long, and a 7-bit target number ($t_{i}$) so that $t_{i} = x_{i1} + x_{i2}$ ($i$ is the sample index). The numbers are represented as binary numbers with the most significant bit on the right (least significant bit first). This is so that our RNN can perform the addition form left to right.

The input and target vectors are stored in a 3th-order tensor. A tensor is a generalisation of vectors and matrices, a vector is a 1st-order tensor, a matrix is a 2nd-order tensor. The order of a tensor is the dimensionality of the array data structure needed to represent it.
The dimensions of our training data (  X_train  ,  T_train  ) are printed after the creation of the dataset below. The first order of our data tensors goes over all the samples (2000 samples), the second order goes over the variables per unit of time (7 timesteps), and the third order goes over the variables for each timestep and sample (e.g. input variables $x_{ik1}$, $x_{ik2}$ with $i$ the sample index and $k$ the timestep). The input tensor  X_train  is visualised in the following figure:

The following code block initialises the dataset.

In [2]:
X_train shape: (2000, 7, 2)
T_train shape: (2000, 7, 1)


Performing binary addition is a good toy problem to illustrate how recurrent neural networks process input streams into output streams. The network needs to learn how to carry a bit to the next state (memory) and when to output a 0 or 1 dependent on the input and state.

The following code prints a visualisation of the inputs and target output we want our network to produce.

In [3]:
x1:   1010010   37
x2: + 1101010   43
-------   --
t:  = 0000101   80


## Recurrent neural network architecture ¶

Our recurrent network will take 2 input variables for each sample for each timepoint, transform them to states, and output a single probability that the current output is $1$ (instead of $0$). The input is transformed into the states of the RNN where it can hold information so the network knows what to output the next timestep.

There are many ways to visualise the RNN we are going to build. We can visualise the network as in the previous part of our tutorial and unfold the processing of each input, state-update and output of a single timestep separately from the other timesteps.

Or we can view the processing of the full input, state-updates, and full output seperately from each other. The full input tensor can be mapped in parallel to be used directly in the RNN state updates. And also the RNN states can be mapped in parallel to the output of each timestep.

The steps are abstracted in different classes below. Each class has a  forward  method that performs the forward steps of backpropagation, and a  backward  method that perform the backward steps of backpropagation.

### Processing of input and output tensors ¶

#### Linear transformation ¶

Neural networks typically transform input vectors by matrix multiplication and vector addition followed by a non-linear transfer function. The 2-dimensional input vectors to our network ($x_{ik1}$, $x_{ik2}$) are transformed by a $2 \times 3$ weight matrix and a bias vector of size 3. Before they can be added to the states of the RNN. The 3-dimensional state vectors are transformed to a 1-dimensional output vector by a $3 \times 1$ weight matrix and a bias vector of size 1 to give the output probabilities.

Since we want to process all inputs for each sample and each timestep in one computation we can use the numpy  tensordot  function to perform the dot products. This function takes 2 tensors and the axes that need to be aggregated by summation between the elements and a product of the result. For example the transformation of input X ($2000 \times 7 \times 2$) to the states S ($2000 \times 7 \times 3$) with the help of matrix W ($2 \times 3$) can be done by  S = tensordot(X, W, axes=((-1),(0)))  . This method will sum the elements of the last order (-1) of X with the elements of the first order (0) of W and multiply them together. This is the same as doing the matrix dot product for each [$x_{ik1}$, $x_{ik2}$] vector with W.  tensordot  can then make sure that the underlying computations can be done efficiently and in parallel.

These linear tensor transformations are used to transform the input X to the states S, and from the states S to the output Y. This linear transformation, together with its gradient is implemented in the  TensorLinear  class below. Note that the weights are initialized by sampling uniformly between $\pm \sqrt{6.0 / (n_{in} + n_{out})}$ as suggested by X. Glorot .

#### Logistic classification ¶

Logistic classification is used to output the probability that the output at current time step k is 1. This function together with its cost and gradient is implemented in the  LogisticClassifier  class below.

In [4]:
# Define the linear tensor transformation layer
class TensorLinear(object):
"""The linear tensor layer applies a linear tensor dot product and a bias to its input."""
def __init__(self, n_in, n_out, tensor_order, W=None, b=None):
"""Initialse the weight W and bias b parameters."""
a = np.sqrt(6.0 / (n_in + n_out))
self.W = (np.random.uniform(-a, a, (n_in, n_out)) if W is None else W)
self.b = (np.zeros((n_out)) if b is None else b)  # Bias paramters
self.bpAxes = tuple(range(tensor_order-1))  # Axes summed over in backprop

def forward(self, X):
"""Perform forward step transformation with the help of a tensor product."""
# Same as: Y[i,j,:] = np.dot(X[i,j,:], self.W) + self.b (for i,j in X.shape[0:1])
# Same as: Y = np.einsum('ijk,kl->ijl', X, self.W) + self.b
return np.tensordot(X, self.W, axes=((-1),(0))) + self.b

def backward(self, X, gY):
"""Return the gradient of the parmeters and the inputs of this layer."""
# Same as: gW = np.einsum('ijk,ijl->kl', X, gY)
# Same as: gW += np.dot(X[:,j,:].T, gY[:,j,:]) (for i,j in X.shape[0:1])
gW = np.tensordot(X, gY, axes=(self.bpAxes, self.bpAxes))
gB = np.sum(gY, axis=self.bpAxes)
# Same as: gX = np.einsum('ijk,kl->ijl', gY, self.W.T)
# Same as: gX[i,j,:] = np.dot(gY[i,j,:], self.W.T) (for i,j in gY.shape[0:1])
gX = np.tensordot(gY, self.W.T, axes=((-1),(0)))
return gX, gW, gB

In [5]:
# Define the logistic classifier layer
class LogisticClassifier(object):
"""The logistic layer applies the logistic function to its inputs."""

def forward(self, X):
"""Perform the forward step transformation."""
return 1 / (1 + np.exp(-X))

def backward(self, Y, T):
"""Return the gradient with respect to the cost function at the inputs of this layer."""
# Normalise of the number of samples and sequence length.
return (Y - T) / (Y.shape[0] * Y.shape[1])

def cost(self, Y, T):
"""Compute the cost at the output."""
# Normalise of the number of samples and sequence length.
# Add a small number (1e-99) because Y can become 0 if the network learns
#  to perfectly predict the output. log(0) is undefined.
return - np.sum(np.multiply(T, np.log(Y+1e-99)) + np.multiply((1-T), np.log(1-Y+1e-99))) / (Y.shape[0] * Y.shape[1])


### Unfolding the recurrent states ¶

Just as in the previous part of this tutorial the recurrent states need to be unfolded through time. This unfolding during backpropagation through time is done by the  RecurrentStateUnfold  class. This class holds the shared weight and bias parameters used to update each state, as well as the initial state that is also treated as a parameter and optimized during backpropagation.

The  forward  method of  RecurrentStateUnfold  iteratively updates the states through time and returns the resulting state tensor. The  backward  method propagates the gradients at the outputs of each state backwards through time. Note that at each time $k$ the gradient coming from the output Y needs to be added with the gradient coming from the previous state at time $k+1$. The gradients of the weight and bias parameters are summed over all timestep since they are shared parameters in each state update. The final state gradient at time $k=0$ is used to optimise the initial state $S_0$ since the gradient of the inital state is $\partial \xi / \partial S_{0}$.

 RecurrentStateUnfold  makes use of the  RecurrentStateUpdate  class. The  forward  method of this class combines the transformed input and state at time $k-1$ to output state $k$. The  backward  method propagates the gradient backwards through time for one timestep and calculates the gradients of the parameters of this timestep. The non-linear transfer function used in  RecurrentStateUpdate  is the hyperbolic tangent (tanh) function. This function, like the logistic function, is a sigmoid function that goes from $-1$ to $+1$. The tanh function is chosen because the maximum gradient of this function is higher than the maximum gradient of the logistic function which make vanishing gradients less likely. This tanh transfer function is implemented in the  TanH  class.

In [6]:
In [7]:
# Define internal state update layer
class RecurrentStateUpdate(object):
"""Update a given state."""
def __init__(self, nbStates, W, b):
"""Initialse the linear transformation and tanh transfer function."""
self.linear = TensorLinear(nbStates, nbStates, 2, W, b)
self.tanh = TanH()

def forward(self, Xk, Sk):
"""Return state k+1 from input and state k."""
return self.tanh.forward(Xk + self.linear.forward(Sk))

"""Return the gradient of the parmeters and the inputs of this layer."""
gSk0, gW, gB = self.linear.backward(Sk0, gZ)
return gZ, gSk0, gW, gB

In [8]:
# Define layer that unfolds the states over time
class RecurrentStateUnfold(object):
"""Unfold the recurrent states."""
def __init__(self, nbStates, nbTimesteps):
" Initialse the shared parameters, the inital state and state update function."
a = np.sqrt(6.0 / (nbStates * 2))
self.W = np.random.uniform(-a, a, (nbStates, nbStates))
self.b = np.zeros((self.W.shape[0]))  # Shared bias
self.S0 = np.zeros(nbStates)  # Initial state
self.nbTimesteps = nbTimesteps  # Timesteps to unfold
self.stateUpdate = RecurrentStateUpdate(nbStates, self.W, self.b)  # State update function

def forward(self, X):
"""Iteratively apply forward step to all states."""
S = np.zeros((X.shape[0], X.shape[1]+1, self.W.shape[0]))  # State tensor
S[:,0,:] = self.S0  # Set initial state
for k in range(self.nbTimesteps):
# Update the states iteratively
S[:,k+1,:] = self.stateUpdate.forward(X[:,k,:], S[:,k,:])
return S

def backward(self, X, S, gY):
"""Return the gradient of the parmeters and the inputs of this layer."""
gSk = np.zeros_like(gY[:,self.nbTimesteps-1,:])  # Initialise gradient of state outputs
gZ = np.zeros_like(X)  # Initialse gradient tensor for state inputs
gWSum = np.zeros_like(self.W)  # Initialise weight gradients
gBSum = np.zeros_like(self.b)  # Initialse bias gradients
for k in range(self.nbTimesteps-1, -1, -1):
gSk += gY[:,k,:]
# Propgate the gradient back through one state
gZ[:,k,:], gSk, gW, gB = self.stateUpdate.backward(S[:,k,:], S[:,k+1,:], gSk)
gWSum += gW  # Update total weight gradient
gBSum += gB  # Update total bias gradient
gS0 = np.sum(gSk, axis=0)  # Get gradient of initial state over all samples
return gZ, gWSum, gBSum, gS0


### The full network ¶

The full network that will be trained to perform binary addition of two number is defined in the  RnnBinaryAdder  class below. It initialises all the layers upon creation. The  forward  method performs the full backpropagation forward step through all layers and timesteps and returns the intermediary outputs. The  backward  method performs the backward step through all layers and timesteps and returns the gradients of all the parameters. The  getParamGrads  method performs both steps and returns the gradients of the parameters in a list. The order of this list corresponds to the order of the iterator returned by  get_params_iter  . The parameters returned in the iterator of that last method are the same as the parameters of the network and can be used to change the parameters of the network manually.

In [9]:
# Define the full network
"""RNN to perform binary addition of 2 numbers."""
def __init__(self, nb_of_inputs, nb_of_outputs, nb_of_states, sequence_len):
"""Initialse the network layers."""
self.tensorInput = TensorLinear(nb_of_inputs, nb_of_states, 3)  # Input layer
self.rnnUnfold = RecurrentStateUnfold(nb_of_states, sequence_len)  # Recurrent layer
self.tensorOutput = TensorLinear(nb_of_states, nb_of_outputs, 3)  # Linear output transform
self.classifier = LogisticClassifier()  # Classification output

def forward(self, X):
"""Perform the forward propagation of input X through all layers."""
recIn = self.tensorInput.forward(X)  # Linear input transformation
# Forward propagate through time and return states
S = self.rnnUnfold.forward(recIn)
Z = self.tensorOutput.forward(S[:,1:sequence_len+1,:])  # Linear output transformation
Y = self.classifier.forward(Z)  # Get classification probabilities
# Return: input to recurrent layer, states, input to classifier, output
return recIn, S, Z, Y

def backward(self, X, Y, recIn, S, T):
"""Perform the backward propagation through all layers.
Input: input samples, network output, intput to recurrent layer, states, targets."""
gZ = self.classifier.backward(Y, T)  # Get output gradient
gRecOut, gWout, gBout = self.tensorOutput.backward(S[:,1:sequence_len+1,:], gZ)
# Propagate gradient backwards through time
gRnnIn, gWrec, gBrec, gS0 = self.rnnUnfold.backward(recIn, S, gRecOut)
gX, gWin, gBin = self.tensorInput.backward(X, gRnnIn)
# Return the parameter gradients of: linear output weights, linear output bias,
#  recursive weights, recursive bias, linear input weights, linear input bias, initial state.
return gWout, gBout, gWrec, gBrec, gWin, gBin, gS0

def getOutput(self, X):
"""Get the output probabilities of input X."""
recIn, S, Z, Y = self.forward(X)
return Y  # Only return the output.

def getBinaryOutput(self, X):
"""Get the binary output of input X."""
return np.around(self.getOutput(X))

"""Return the gradients with respect to input X and target T as a list.
The list has the same order as the get_params_iter iterator."""
recIn, S, Z, Y = self.forward(X)
gWout, gBout, gWrec, gBrec, gWin, gBin, gS0 = self.backward(X, Y, recIn, S, T)
return [g for g in itertools.chain(
np.nditer(gS0),
np.nditer(gWin),
np.nditer(gBin),
np.nditer(gWrec),
np.nditer(gBrec),
np.nditer(gWout),
np.nditer(gBout))]

def cost(self, Y, T):
"""Return the cost of input X w.r.t. targets T."""
return self.classifier.cost(Y, T)

def get_params_iter(self):
"""Return an iterator over the parameters.
The iterator has the same order as get_params_grad.
The elements returned by the iterator are editable in-place."""
return itertools.chain(


As in part 4 of our previous tutorial on feedforward nets the gradient computed by backpropagation is compared with the numerical gradient to assert that there are no bugs in the code to compute the gradients. This is done by the code below.

In [10]:
No gradient errors found


## Rmsprop with momentum optimisation ¶

While the first part of this tutorial used Rprop to optimise the network, this part will use the Rmsprop algorithm with Nesterov's accelerated gradient to perform the optimisation. We replaced the Rprop algorithm because Rprop doesn't work well with minibatches due to the stochastic nature of the error surface that can result in sign changes of the gradient.

The Rmsprop algorithm was inspired by the Rprop algorithm. It keeps a moving average (MA) of the squared gradient for each parameter $\theta$ ($MA = \lambda * MA + (1-\lambda) * (\partial \xi / \partial \theta)^2$, with $\lambda$ the moving average hyperparameter). The gradient is then normalised by dividing by the square root of this moving average (  maSquare  = $(\partial \xi / \partial \theta)/\sqrt{MA}$). This normalised gradient is then used to update the parameters. Note that if $\lambda=0$ the gradient is reduced to its sign.

This transformed gradient is not used directly to update the parameters, but it is used to update a velocity parameter (  Vs  ) for each parameter of the network. This parameter is similar to the velocity parameter from our previous tutorial but it is used in a slightly different way. Nesterov's accelerated gradient is different from regular momentum in that it applies updates in a different way. While the regular momentum algorithm calculates the gradient at the beginning of the iteration, updates the velocity and moves the parameters according to this velocity, Nesterov's accelerated gradient moves the parameters according to the reduced velocity, then calculates the gradients, updates the velocity, and then moves again according to the local gradient. This has as benefit that the gradient is more informative to do the local update, and can correct for a bad velocity update. The Nesterov updates can be described as:

$$\begin{split} V_{i+1} & = \lambda V_i - \mu \nabla(\theta_i + \lambda V_i) \\ \theta_{i+1} & = \theta_i + V_{i+1} \\ \end{split}$$

With $\nabla(\theta)$ the local gradient at position $\theta$ in the parameter space. And $i$ the iteration number. This formula can be visualised as in the following illustration (See Sutskever I. ):

Note that the training converges to a cost of 0. This convergence is actually not guaranteed. If the parameters of the network start out in a bad position the network might convert to a local minimum that is far from the global minimum. The training is also sensitive to the meta parameters  lmbd  ,  learning_rate  ,  momentum_term  ,  eps  . Try rerunning this yourself to see how many times it actually converges.

In [11]:
# Set hyper-parameters
lmbd = 0.5  # Rmsprop lambda
learning_rate = 0.05  # Learning rate
momentum_term = 0.80  # Momentum term
eps = 1e-6  # Numerical stability term to prevent division by zero
mb_size = 100  # Size of the minibatches (number of samples)

# Create the network
nb_of_states = 3  # Number of states in the recurrent layer
RNN = RnnBinaryAdder(2, 1, nb_of_states, sequence_len)
# Set the initial parameters
nbParameters =  sum(1 for _ in RNN.get_params_iter())  # Number of parameters in the network
maSquare = [0.0 for _ in range(nbParameters)]  # Rmsprop moving average
Vs = [0.0 for _ in range(nbParameters)]  # Velocity

# Create a list of minibatch costs to be plotted
ls_of_costs = [RNN.cost(RNN.getOutput(X_train[0:100,:,:]), T_train[0:100,:,:])]
# Iterate over some iterations
for i in range(5):
# Iterate over all the minibatches
for mb in range(nb_train/mb_size):
X_mb = X_train[mb:mb+mb_size,:,:]  # Input minibatch
T_mb = T_train[mb:mb+mb_size,:,:]  # Target minibatch
V_tmp = [v * momentum_term for v in Vs]
# Update each parameters according to previous gradient
for pIdx, P in enumerate(RNN.get_params_iter()):
P += V_tmp[pIdx]
# Get gradients after following old velocity
# Update each parameter seperately
for pIdx, P in enumerate(RNN.get_params_iter()):
# Update the Rmsprop moving averages
maSquare[pIdx] = lmbd * maSquare[pIdx] + (1-lmbd) * backprop_grads[pIdx]**2
# Calculate the Rmsprop normalised gradient
# Update the momentum velocity
P -= pGradNorm   # Update the parameter
ls_of_costs.append(RNN.cost(RNN.getOutput(X_mb), T_mb))  # Add cost to list to plot

In [12]:

## Test examples ¶

The figure above shows that the training converged to a cost of 0. We expect the network to have learned how to perfectly do binary addition for our training examples. If we put some independent test cases through the network and print them out we can see that the network also outputs the correct output for these test cases.

In [13]:
x1:   0100010   34
x2: + 1100100   19
-------   --
t:  = 1010110   53
y:  = 1010110

x1:   1010100   21
x2: + 1110100   23
-------   --
t:  = 0011010   44
y:  = 0011010

x1:   1111010   47
x2: + 0000000    0
-------   --
t:  = 1111010   47
y:  = 1111010

x1:   1000000    1
x2: + 1111110   63
-------   --
t:  = 0000001   64
y:  = 0000001

x1:   1010100   21
x2: + 1010100   21
-------   --
t:  = 0101010   42
y:  = 0101010



This post at peterroelants.github.io is generated from an IPython notebook file. Link to the full IPython notebook file