For brevity and convenience, we assume from now on that main packages (dana, numpy, scipy, and matplotlib) have been imported as:
>>> import dana
>>> import numpy as np
>>> import matplotlib as mpl
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
An alternative way is to write:
>>> from dana import *
that will makes numpy, numpy.random and matpotlib.pyplot available as np, rnd and plt and dana objects directly accessibles.
One the main object of dana is the Group class which is more or less equivalent to a numpy structured array with some subtle differences from a user point of view. Numpy array layout is such that the data pointer points to one block of N items, where each item is described by the dtype:
>>> Z = np.zeros((3,3), [('x',float), ('y',float)])
>>> print Z['x'].flags['CONTIGUOUS']
False
DANA group layout is quite different since each element of the dtype is made of a contiguous block of memory:
>>> Z = dana.zeros((3,3), [('x',float), ('y',float)])
>>> print Z['x'].flags['CONTIGUOUS']
True
This is a design choice to make things a little bit faster since each group field may be subject to intensitve computation and the interleaved nature of numpy structured arrays would slow down things. This means that a group is not a numpy array. Consequently, even if dana tries to ensure a maximum compatibility between the two of them, there may be nonetheless some incompatibilities or missing features.
Warning
Because of the fundamental difference in respective memory layouts, each conversion implies a whole copy of the data.
Conversion from group to array and vice-versa is straightforward:
Group to array:
>>> G = zeros((3,3), [('x',float), ('y',float)])
>>> A = G.asarray()
Array to group:
>>> A = np.zeros((3,3), [('x',float), ('y',float)])
>>> G = Group(A)
A specific field of a group can be accessed using three different syntaxes:
Accessing field as a regular attribute (the result is the underlying numpy array representing the requested field):
>>> G = zeros((3,3), [('x',float), ('y',float)])
>>> print type(G.x)
<type 'numpy.ndarray'>
Accessing field as an item (the result is the underlying numpy array representing the requested field):
>>> print type(G['x'])
<type 'numpy.ndarray'>
Accessing field through a function call:
>>> print type(G('x'))
<class 'dana.group'>
The result is a new group with a unique field corresponding to the one requested. Note that this group is only a placeholder since the actual underlying numpy array is not copied:
>>> G('x').x is G.x
True
Even if dana is slanted toward computational neuroscience, we’ll consider in this section the game of life by John Conway which is one of the earliest example of cellular automata (see figure below). Those cellular automaton can be conveninetly considered as groups of units that are connected together through the notion of neightbours. We’ll show in the following sections implementation of this game using pure python, numpy and dana in order to illustrate main concepts of dana as well as main differences with python and numpy.
Figure 1 Simulation of the game of life.
Note
This is an excerpt from wikipedia entry on Cellular Automaton.
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is the best-known example of a cellular automaton. The “game” is actually a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, needing no input from human players. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves.
The universe of the Game of Life is an infinite two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, live or dead. Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are directly horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur:
The initial pattern constitutes the ‘seed’ of the system. The first generation is created by applying the above rules simultaneously to every cell in the seed – births and deaths happen simultaneously, and the discrete moment at which this happens is sometimes called a tick. (In other words, each generation is a pure function of the one before.) The rules continue to be applied repeatedly to create further generations.
In pure python, we can code the Game of Life using a list of lists representing the board where cells are supposed to evolve:
>>> Z = [[0,0,0,0,0,0],
[0,0,0,1,0,0],
[0,1,0,1,0,0],
[0,0,1,1,0,0],
[0,0,0,0,0,0],
[0,0,0,0,0,0]]
This board possesses a 0 border that allows to accelerate things a bit by avoiding to have specific tests for borders when counting the number of neighbours. To iterate one step in time, we simply count the number of neighbours for each internal cell and we update the whole board according to the Game of Life rules:
def iterate(Z):
shape = len(Z), len(Z[0])
N = [[0,]*(shape[0]+2) for i in range(shape[1]+2)]
# Compute number of neighbours for each cell
for x in range(1,shape[0]-1):
for y in range(1,shape[1]-1):
N[x][y] = Z[x-1][y-1]+Z[x][y-1]+Z[x+1][y-1] \
+ Z[x-1][y] +Z[x+1][y] \
+ Z[x-1][y+1]+Z[x][y+1]+Z[x+1][y+1]
# Update cells
for x in range(1,shape[0]-1):
for y in range(1,shape[1]-1):
if Z[x][y] == 0 and N[x][y] == 3:
Z[x][y] = 1
elif Z[x][y] == 1 and not N[x][y] in [2,3]:
Z[x][y] = 0
return Z
Using numpy, we can benefit from vectorized computation and accelerates things a lot. The board can now be represented using a numpy array:
>>> Z = np.array ([[0,0,0,0,0,0],
[0,0,0,1,0,0],
[0,1,0,1,0,0],
[0,0,1,1,0,0],
[0,0,0,0,0,0],
[0,0,0,0,0,0]])
This board possesses a 0 border that allows to accelerate things a bit by avoiding to have specific tests for borders when counting the number of neighbours. To iterate one step in time, we count the number of neighbours for all internal cells at once and we update the whole board according to the Game of Life rules:
def iterate(Z):
# find number of neighbours that each square has
N = np.zeros(Z.shape)
N[1:, 1:] += Z[:-1, :-1]
N[1:, :-1] += Z[:-1, 1:]
N[:-1, 1:] += Z[1:, :-1]
N[:-1, :-1] += Z[1:, 1:]
N[:-1, :] += Z[1:, :]
N[1:, :] += Z[:-1, :]
N[:, :-1] += Z[:, 1:]
N[:, 1:] += Z[:, :-1]
# a live cell is killed if it has fewer than 2 or more than 3 neighbours.
part1 = ((Z == 1) & (N < 4) & (N > 1))
# a new cell forms if a square has exactly three members
part2 = ((Z == 0) & (N == 3))
return (part1 | part2).astype(int)
As for numpy, the first things to do is to create a Group for holding our cells. Howver, instead of simply declaring group dtype, we can directly give the equation governing each value such that:
According to the game of life rules, we know that:
Thus, we declare Z as:
>>> Z = Group((4,4), '''V = maximum(0,1.0-(N<1.5)-(N>3.5)-(N<2.5)*(1-V)) : int
N : int''')
and we initialize the V value with the glider pattern:
>>> Z.V = np.array([[0,0,1,0],
[1,0,1,0],
[0,1,1,0],
[0,0,0,0]])
This group is now made of 4x4 cells, each of them having a two values named V and N. The first value V has been specified using an Equation while the second is a simple Declaration that will be a placeholder for the connection output.
Each cell now needs to be connected to its immediate neighbours and this can be done by using a Connection to connect Z to itself (see chapter Connections for further details):
>>> C = SharedConnection(Z('V'), Z('N'),
np.array([[1., 1., 1.],
[1., 0., 1.],
[1., 1., 1.]]))
Cells are now linked to their immediate neighbours using a (shared) connection that will output in the N field in Z. This connection represents the weighted sum of cell state activity using given array. Since array values are either 0 or 1 and cell states are either 0 or 1 , the weighted sum actually represents the number of live cells in the immediate neighboorhood.