how does multiplication differ for NumPy Matrix vs Array classes?

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The numpy docs recommend using array instead of matrix for working with matrices. However, unlike octave (which I was using till recently), * doesn't perform matrix multiplication, you need to use the function matrixmultipy(). I feel this makes the code very unreadable.

Does anybody share my views, and has found a solution?

matrix-multiplication matrix numpy arrays python
8 Answers

Function matmul (since numpy 1.10.1) works fine for both types and return result as a numpy matrix class:

import numpy as np

A = np.mat('1 2 3; 4 5 6; 7 8 9; 10 11 12')
B = np.array(np.mat('1 1 1 1; 1 1 1 1; 1 1 1 1'))
print (A, type(A))
print (B, type(B))

C = np.matmul(A, B)
print (C, type(C))

Output:

(matrix([[ 1,  2,  3],
        [ 4,  5,  6],
        [ 7,  8,  9],
        [10, 11, 12]]), <class 'numpy.matrixlib.defmatrix.matrix'>)
(array([[1, 1, 1, 1],
       [1, 1, 1, 1],
       [1, 1, 1, 1]]), <type 'numpy.ndarray'>)
(matrix([[ 6,  6,  6,  6],
        [15, 15, 15, 15],
        [24, 24, 24, 24],
        [33, 33, 33, 33]]), <class 'numpy.matrixlib.defmatrix.matrix'>)

Since python 3.5 as mentioned early you also can use a new matrix multiplication operator @ like

C = A @ B

and get the same result as above.

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