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I'm in the market for a mathematical (or otherwise) term to describe a slice of a hypercube.

Tensor is out of the running as that's the name of the object I am slicing.

The second I could use a hand with is a term to describe an index (or access point) that spans more than a single point in each dimension.

For example:

  • Regular index [1, 2, 1] would access index 1 in dimension-one, index 2 in dimension-2 and index 1 in dimension-3
  • Spanning Index (or whatever) [3->4, 1, 4->9] would access all elements between indices 3 and 4 of dimension-1, index 1 of dimension-2, etc...

Let me know if this is better suited in the Mathematics StackExchange.

Daniel Fischer
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1 Answers1

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I don't know about terminology, but let me try to formalize what I think you mean, in near-maximum generality. Perhaps this is really what you're looking for; if not, oh well.

This answer assumes a basic understanding of von Neumann ordinals. The second part assumes a basic understanding of functors (in general), and the product functor in particular.


Definition 0. Suppose $X$ is a set and $\alpha$ is an $n$-long sequence of ordinals. Then an $X$-valued array of shape $\alpha$ is a function $X \leftarrow \prod_{i<n} \alpha_i.$

So for example, if $A$ is an $X$-valued array of shape $(3,4,5)$, then the value stored at $(1,2,1)$ is denoted $A(1,2,1)$, and this is an element of $X$.

Anyway, since arrays are just functions, we can use standard mathematical notation to get your "slices". For example, if $A$ has shape $(3,4,5)$, then $A(1,-,-)$ is the corresponding array of shape $(4,5)$ defined in the obvious way. So the two-dimensional "slices" obtained by choosing different values for the first index are

$$A(0,-,-) \qquad A(1,-,-) \qquad A(2,-,-)$$

and these are all $X$-valued arrays of shape $(4,5).$


Your second question is much more interesting. The amazing thing about ordinals is that the following definition makes sense:

Definition 1. Suppose $\beta$ is an ordinal and $S$ is a subset of $\beta$. Then we write $\mathrm{ord}_S$ for the unique ordinal that is order-isomorphic to $S$, and we write $S^*$ for the unique such isomorphism $S \leftarrow \mathrm{ord}_S$.

The cool thing about this is the following. Suppose we're given an array $A$ of shape $(10,10,10).$ Suppose I'm interested in the "subarray" given by [3->4, 1, 4->9]. Well, this can be formally defined as:

$$A \circ ([3,4]^* \times [1]^* \times [4,9]^*)$$

where $\times$ is understood to be a functor in the usual way.

goblin GONE
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