What is the difference between Dataset.from_tensors and Dataset.from_tensor_slices?

Question

I have a dataset represented as a NumPy matrix of shape (num_features, num_examples) and I wish to convert it to TensorFlow type tf.Dataset.

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Answer 1

Try this :

import tensorflow as tf  # 1.13.1
tf.enable_eager_execution()

t1 = tf.constant([[11, 22], [33, 44], [55, 66]])

print("\n=========     from_tensors     ===========")
ds = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensors(t1)
print(ds.output_types, end=' : ')
print(ds.output_shapes)
for e in ds:
    print (e)

print("\n=========   from_tensor_slices    ===========")
ds = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices(t1)
print(ds.output_types, end=' : ')
print(ds.output_shapes)
for e in ds:
    print (e)

output :

=========      from_tensors    ===========
 : (3, 2)
tf.Tensor(
[[11 22]
 [33 44]
 [55 66]], shape=(3, 2), dtype=int32)

=========   from_tensor_slices      ===========
 : (2,)
tf.Tensor([11 22], shape=(2,), dtype=int32)
tf.Tensor([33 44], shape=(2,), dtype=int32)
tf.Tensor([55 66], shape=(2,), dtype=int32)

The output is pretty much self-explanatory but as you can see, from_tensor_slices() slices the output of (what would be the output of) from_tensors() on its first dimension. You can also try with :

t1 = tf.constant([[[11, 22], [33, 44], [55, 66]],
                  [[110, 220], [330, 440], [550, 660]]])