# mxnet.ndarray.SoftmaxOutput¶

mxnet.ndarray.SoftmaxOutput(data=None, label=None, grad_scale=_Null, ignore_label=_Null, multi_output=_Null, use_ignore=_Null, preserve_shape=_Null, normalization=_Null, out_grad=_Null, smooth_alpha=_Null, out=None, name=None, **kwargs)

Computes the gradient of cross entropy loss with respect to softmax output.

• This operator computes the gradient in two steps. The cross entropy loss does not actually need to be computed.

• Applies softmax function on the input array.

• Computes and returns the gradient of cross entropy loss w.r.t. the softmax output.

• The softmax function, cross entropy loss and gradient is given by:

• Softmax Function:

$\text{softmax}(x)_i = \frac{exp(x_i)}{\sum_j exp(x_j)}$
• Cross Entropy Function:

$\text{CE(label, output)} = - \sum_i \text{label}_i \log(\text{output}_i)$
• The gradient of cross entropy loss w.r.t softmax output:

$\text{gradient} = \text{output} - \text{label}$
• During forward propagation, the softmax function is computed for each instance in the input array.

For general N-D input arrays with shape $$(d_1, d_2, ..., d_n)$$. The size is $$s=d_1 \cdot d_2 \cdot \cdot \cdot d_n$$. We can use the parameters preserve_shape and multi_output to specify the way to compute softmax:

• By default, preserve_shape is false. This operator will reshape the input array into a 2-D array with shape $$(d_1, \frac{s}{d_1})$$ and then compute the softmax function for each row in the reshaped array, and afterwards reshape it back to the original shape $$(d_1, d_2, ..., d_n)$$.

• If preserve_shape is true, the softmax function will be computed along the last axis (axis = -1).

• If multi_output is true, the softmax function will be computed along the second axis (axis = 1).

• During backward propagation, the gradient of cross-entropy loss w.r.t softmax output array is computed. The provided label can be a one-hot label array or a probability label array.

• If the parameter use_ignore is true, ignore_label can specify input instances with a particular label to be ignored during backward propagation. This has no effect when softmax output has same shape as label.

Example:

data = [[1,2,3,4],[2,2,2,2],[3,3,3,3],[4,4,4,4]]
label = [1,0,2,3]
ignore_label = 1
SoftmaxOutput(data=data, label = label,\
multi_output=true, use_ignore=true,\
ignore_label=ignore_label)
## forward softmax output
[[ 0.0320586   0.08714432  0.23688284  0.64391428]
[ 0.25        0.25        0.25        0.25      ]
[ 0.25        0.25        0.25        0.25      ]
[ 0.25        0.25        0.25        0.25      ]]
[[ 0.    0.    0.    0.  ]
[-0.75  0.25  0.25  0.25]
[ 0.25  0.25 -0.75  0.25]
[ 0.25  0.25  0.25 -0.75]]
## notice that the first row is all 0 because label[0] is 1, which is equal to ignore_label.

• The parameter grad_scale can be used to rescale the gradient, which is often used to give each loss function different weights.

• This operator also supports various ways to normalize the gradient by normalization, The normalization is applied if softmax output has different shape than the labels. The normalization mode can be set to the followings:

• 'null': do nothing.

• 'batch': divide the gradient by the batch size.

• 'valid': divide the gradient by the number of instances which are not ignored.

Defined in src/operator/softmax_output.cc:L123

Parameters
• data (NDArray) – Input array.

• label (NDArray) – Ground truth label.

• grad_scale (float, optional, default=1) – Scales the gradient by a float factor.

• ignore_label (float, optional, default=-1) – The instances whose labels == ignore_label will be ignored during backward, if use_ignore is set to true).

• multi_output (boolean, optional, default=0) – If set to true, the softmax function will be computed along axis 1. This is applied when the shape of input array differs from the shape of label array.

• use_ignore (boolean, optional, default=0) – If set to true, the ignore_label value will not contribute to the backward gradient.

• preserve_shape (boolean, optional, default=0) – If set to true, the softmax function will be computed along the last axis (-1).

• normalization ({'batch', 'null', 'valid'},optional, default='null') – Normalizes the gradient.