100 numpy exercises with hints#

This is a collection of exercises that have been collected in the numpy mailing list, on stack overflow and in the numpy documentation. The goal of this collection is to offer a quick reference for both old and new users but also to provide a set of exercises for those who teach.

1. Import the numpy package under the name np (★☆☆)#

hint: import … as

3. Create a null vector of size 10 (★☆☆)#

hint: np.zeros

4. How to find the memory size of any array (★☆☆)#

hint: size, itemsize

5. How to get the documentation of the numpy add function from the command line? (★☆☆)#

hint: np.info

6. Create a null vector of size 10 but the fifth value which is 1 (★☆☆)#

hint: array[4]

7. Create a vector with values ranging from 10 to 49 (★☆☆)#

hint: arange

8. Reverse a vector (first element becomes last) (★☆☆)#

hint: array[::-1]

9. Create a 3x3 matrix with values ranging from 0 to 8 (★☆☆)#

hint: reshape

10. Find indices of non-zero elements from [1,2,0,0,4,0] (★☆☆)#

hint: np.nonzero

11. Create a 3x3 identity matrix (★☆☆)#

hint: np.eye

12. Create a 3x3x3 array with random values (★☆☆)#

hint: np.random.random

13. Create a 10x10 array with random values and find the minimum and maximum values (★☆☆)#

hint: min, max

14. Create a random vector of size 30 and find the mean value (★☆☆)#

hint: mean

15. Create a 2d array with 1 on the border and 0 inside (★☆☆)#

hint: array[1:-1, 1:-1]

16. How to add a border (filled with 0’s) around an existing array? (★☆☆)#

hint: np.pad

17. What is the result of the following expression? (★☆☆)#

0 * np.nan
np.nan == np.nan
np.inf > np.nan
np.nan - np.nan
np.nan in set([np.nan])
0.3 == 3 * 0.1

hint: NaN = not a number, inf = infinity

18. Create a 5x5 matrix with values 1,2,3,4 just below the diagonal (★☆☆)#

hint: np.diag

19. Create a 8x8 matrix and fill it with a checkerboard pattern (★☆☆)#

hint: array[::2]

20. Consider a (6,7,8) shape array, what is the index (x,y,z) of the 100th element?#

hint: np.unravel_index

21. Create a checkerboard 8x8 matrix using the tile function (★☆☆)#

hint: np.tile

22. Normalize a 5x5 random matrix (★☆☆)#

hint: (x -mean)/std

23. Create a custom dtype that describes a color as four unsigned bytes (RGBA) (★☆☆)#

hint: np.dtype

24. Multiply a 5x3 matrix by a 3x2 matrix (real matrix product) (★☆☆)#

hint:

25. Given a 1D array, negate all elements which are between 3 and 8, in place. (★☆☆)#

hint: >, <

26. What is the output of the following script? (★☆☆)#

# Author: Jake VanderPlas

print(sum(range(5),-1))
from numpy import *
print(sum(range(5),-1))

hint: np.sum

28. What are the result of the following expressions?#

np.array(0) / np.array(0)
np.array(0) // np.array(0)
np.array([np.nan]).astype(int).astype(float)

No hints provided...

29. How to round away from zero a float array ? (★☆☆)#

hint: np.uniform, np.copysign, np.ceil, np.abs, np.where

30. How to find common values between two arrays? (★☆☆)#

hint: np.intersect1d

32. Is the following expressions true? (★☆☆)#

np.sqrt(-1) == np.emath.sqrt(-1)

hint: imaginary number

33. How to get the dates of yesterday, today and tomorrow? (★☆☆)#

hint: np.datetime64, np.timedelta64

34. How to get all the dates corresponding to the month of July 2016? (★★☆)#

hint: np.arange(dtype=datetime64['D'])

35. How to compute ((A+B)*(-A/2)) in place (without copy)? (★★☆)#

hint: np.add(out=), np.negative(out=), np.multiply(out=), np.divide(out=)

36. Extract the integer part of a random array of positive numbers using 4 different methods (★★☆)#

hint: %, np.floor, astype, np.trunc

37. Create a 5x5 matrix with row values ranging from 0 to 4 (★★☆)#

hint: np.arange

38. Consider a generator function that generates 10 integers and use it to build an array (★☆☆)#

hint: np.fromiter

39. Create a vector of size 10 with values ranging from 0 to 1, both excluded (★★☆)#

hint: np.linspace

40. Create a random vector of size 10 and sort it (★★☆)#

hint: sort

41. How to sum a small array faster than np.sum? (★★☆)#

hint: np.add.reduce

42. Consider two random array A and B, check if they are equal (★★☆)#

hint: np.allclose, np.array_equal

43. Make an array immutable (read-only) (★★☆)#

hint: flags.writeable

44. Consider a random 10x2 matrix representing cartesian coordinates, convert them to polar coordinates (★★☆)#

hint: np.sqrt, np.arctan2

45. Create random vector of size 10 and replace the maximum value by 0 (★★☆)#

hint: argmax

46. Create a structured array with x and y coordinates covering the [0,1]x[0,1] area (★★☆)#

hint: np.meshgrid

47. Given two arrays, X and Y, construct the Cauchy matrix C (Cij =1/(xi - yj))#

hint: np.subtract.outer

49. How to print all the values of an array? (★★☆)#

hint: np.set_printoptions

50. How to find the closest value (to a given scalar) in a vector? (★★☆)#

hint: argmin

51. Create a structured array representing a position (x,y) and a color (r,g,b) (★★☆)#

hint: dtype

52. Consider a random vector with shape (100,2) representing coordinates, find point by point distances (★★☆)#

hint: np.atleast_2d, T, np.sqrt

53. How to convert a float (32 bits) array into an integer (32 bits) in place?#

hint: view and [:] =

54. How to read the following file? (★★☆)#

1, 2, 3, 4, 5
6,  ,  , 7, 8
 ,  , 9,10,11

hint: np.genfromtxt

55. What is the equivalent of enumerate for numpy arrays? (★★☆)#

hint: np.ndenumerate, np.ndindex

56. Generate a generic 2D Gaussian-like array (★★☆)#

hint: np.meshgrid, np.exp

57. How to randomly place p elements in a 2D array? (★★☆)#

hint: np.put, np.random.choice

58. Subtract the mean of each row of a matrix (★★☆)#

hint: mean(axis=,keepdims=)

59. How to sort an array by the nth column? (★★☆)#

hint: argsort

60. How to tell if a given 2D array has null columns? (★★☆)#

hint: any, ~

61. Find the nearest value from a given value in an array (★★☆)#

hint: np.abs, argmin, flat

62. Considering two arrays with shape (1,3) and (3,1), how to compute their sum using an iterator? (★★☆)#

hint: np.nditer

63. Create an array class that has a name attribute (★★☆)#

hint: class method

64. Consider a given vector, how to add 1 to each element indexed by a second vector (be careful with repeated indices)? (★★★)#

hint: np.bincount | np.add.at

65. How to accumulate elements of a vector (X) to an array (F) based on an index list (I)? (★★★)#

hint: np.bincount

66. Considering a (w,h,3) image of (dtype=ubyte), compute the number of unique colors (★★★)#

hint: np.unique

67. Considering a four dimensions array, how to get sum over the last two axis at once? (★★★)#

hint: sum(axis=(-2,-1))

68. Considering a one-dimensional vector D, how to compute means of subsets of D using a vector S of same size describing subset indices? (★★★)#

hint: np.bincount

69. How to get the diagonal of a dot product? (★★★)#

hint: np.diag

70. Consider the vector [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], how to build a new vector with 3 consecutive zeros interleaved between each value? (★★★)#

hint: array[::4]

71. Consider an array of dimension (5,5,3), how to mulitply it by an array with dimensions (5,5)? (★★★)#

hint: array[:, :, None]

72. How to swap two rows of an array? (★★★)#

hint: array[[]] = array[[]]

73. Consider a set of 10 triplets describing 10 triangles (with shared vertices), find the set of unique line segments composing all the triangles (★★★)#

hint: repeat, np.roll, np.sort, view, np.unique

74. Given an array C that is a bincount, how to produce an array A such that np.bincount(A) == C? (★★★)#

hint: np.repeat

75. How to compute averages using a sliding window over an array? (★★★)#

hint: np.cumsum

76. Consider a one-dimensional array Z, build a two-dimensional array whose first row is (Z[0],Z[1],Z[2]) and each subsequent row is shifted by 1 (last row should be (Z[-3],Z[-2],Z[-1]) (★★★)#

hint: from numpy.lib import stride_tricks

77. How to negate a boolean, or to change the sign of a float inplace? (★★★)#

hint: np.logical_not, np.negative

78. Consider 2 sets of points P0,P1 describing lines (2d) and a point p, how to compute distance from p to each line i (P0[i],P1[i])? (★★★)#

No hints provided...

79. Consider 2 sets of points P0,P1 describing lines (2d) and a set of points P, how to compute distance from each point j (P[j]) to each line i (P0[i],P1[i])? (★★★)#

No hints provided...

80. Consider an arbitrary array, write a function that extract a subpart with a fixed shape and centered on a given element (pad with a fill value when necessary) (★★★)#

hint: minimum maximum

81. Consider an array Z = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14], how to generate an array R = [[1,2,3,4], [2,3,4,5], [3,4,5,6], …, [11,12,13,14]]? (★★★)#

hint: stride_tricks.as_strided

82. Compute a matrix rank (★★★)#

hint: np.linalg.svd

83. How to find the most frequent value in an array?#

hint: np.bincount, argmax

84. Extract all the contiguous 3x3 blocks from a random 10x10 matrix (★★★)#

hint: stride_tricks.as_strided

85. Create a 2D array subclass such that Z[i,j] == Z[j,i] (★★★)#

hint: class method

86. Consider a set of p matrices wich shape (n,n) and a set of p vectors with shape (n,1). How to compute the sum of of the p matrix products at once? (result has shape (n,1)) (★★★)#

hint: np.tensordot

87. Consider a 16x16 array, how to get the block-sum (block size is 4x4)? (★★★)#

hint: np.add.reduceat

88. How to implement the Game of Life using numpy arrays? (★★★)#

No hints provided...

89. How to get the n largest values of an array (★★★)#

hint: np.argsort | np.argpartition

90. Given an arbitrary number of vectors, build the cartesian product (every combinations of every item) (★★★)#

hint: np.indices

91. How to create a record array from a regular array? (★★★)#

hint: np.core.records.fromarrays

92. Consider a large vector Z, compute Z to the power of 3 using 3 different methods (★★★)#

hint: np.power, *, np.einsum

93. Consider two arrays A and B of shape (8,3) and (2,2). How to find rows of A that contain elements of each row of B regardless of the order of the elements in B? (★★★)#

hint: np.where

94. Considering a 10x3 matrix, extract rows with unequal values (e.g. [2,2,3]) (★★★)#

No hints provided...

95. Convert a vector of ints into a matrix binary representation (★★★)#

hint: np.unpackbits

96. Given a two dimensional array, how to extract unique rows? (★★★)#

hint: np.ascontiguousarray | np.unique

97. Considering 2 vectors A & B, write the einsum equivalent of inner, outer, sum, and mul function (★★★)#

hint: np.einsum

98. Considering a path described by two vectors (X,Y), how to sample it using equidistant samples (★★★)?#

hint: np.cumsum, np.interp

99. Given an integer n and a 2D array X, select from X the rows which can be interpreted as draws from a multinomial distribution with n degrees, i.e., the rows which only contain integers and which sum to n. (★★★)#

hint: np.logical_and.reduce, np.mod

100. Compute bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals for the mean of a 1D array X (i.e., resample the elements of an array with replacement N times, compute the mean of each sample, and then compute percentiles over the means). (★★★)#

hint: np.percentile

On this page