Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@karpathy
Last active March 27, 2024 21:13
Star You must be signed in to star a gist
Save karpathy/d4dee566867f8291f086 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Minimal character-level language model with a Vanilla Recurrent Neural Network, in Python/numpy
"""
Minimal character-level Vanilla RNN model. Written by Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy)
BSD License
"""
import numpy as np
# data I/O
data = open('input.txt', 'r').read() # should be simple plain text file
chars = list(set(data))
data_size, vocab_size = len(data), len(chars)
print 'data has %d characters, %d unique.' % (data_size, vocab_size)
char_to_ix = { ch:i for i,ch in enumerate(chars) }
ix_to_char = { i:ch for i,ch in enumerate(chars) }
# hyperparameters
hidden_size = 100 # size of hidden layer of neurons
seq_length = 25 # number of steps to unroll the RNN for
learning_rate = 1e-1
# model parameters
Wxh = np.random.randn(hidden_size, vocab_size)*0.01 # input to hidden
Whh = np.random.randn(hidden_size, hidden_size)*0.01 # hidden to hidden
Why = np.random.randn(vocab_size, hidden_size)*0.01 # hidden to output
bh = np.zeros((hidden_size, 1)) # hidden bias
by = np.zeros((vocab_size, 1)) # output bias
def lossFun(inputs, targets, hprev):
"""
inputs,targets are both list of integers.
hprev is Hx1 array of initial hidden state
returns the loss, gradients on model parameters, and last hidden state
"""
xs, hs, ys, ps = {}, {}, {}, {}
hs[-1] = np.copy(hprev)
loss = 0
# forward pass
for t in xrange(len(inputs)):
xs[t] = np.zeros((vocab_size,1)) # encode in 1-of-k representation
xs[t][inputs[t]] = 1
hs[t] = np.tanh(np.dot(Wxh, xs[t]) + np.dot(Whh, hs[t-1]) + bh) # hidden state
ys[t] = np.dot(Why, hs[t]) + by # unnormalized log probabilities for next chars
ps[t] = np.exp(ys[t]) / np.sum(np.exp(ys[t])) # probabilities for next chars
loss += -np.log(ps[t][targets[t],0]) # softmax (cross-entropy loss)
# backward pass: compute gradients going backwards
dWxh, dWhh, dWhy = np.zeros_like(Wxh), np.zeros_like(Whh), np.zeros_like(Why)
dbh, dby = np.zeros_like(bh), np.zeros_like(by)
dhnext = np.zeros_like(hs[0])
for t in reversed(xrange(len(inputs))):
dy = np.copy(ps[t])
dy[targets[t]] -= 1 # backprop into y. see http://cs231n.github.io/neural-networks-case-study/#grad if confused here
dWhy += np.dot(dy, hs[t].T)
dby += dy
dh = np.dot(Why.T, dy) + dhnext # backprop into h
dhraw = (1 - hs[t] * hs[t]) * dh # backprop through tanh nonlinearity
dbh += dhraw
dWxh += np.dot(dhraw, xs[t].T)
dWhh += np.dot(dhraw, hs[t-1].T)
dhnext = np.dot(Whh.T, dhraw)
for dparam in [dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby]:
np.clip(dparam, -5, 5, out=dparam) # clip to mitigate exploding gradients
return loss, dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby, hs[len(inputs)-1]
def sample(h, seed_ix, n):
"""
sample a sequence of integers from the model
h is memory state, seed_ix is seed letter for first time step
"""
x = np.zeros((vocab_size, 1))
x[seed_ix] = 1
ixes = []
for t in xrange(n):
h = np.tanh(np.dot(Wxh, x) + np.dot(Whh, h) + bh)
y = np.dot(Why, h) + by
p = np.exp(y) / np.sum(np.exp(y))
ix = np.random.choice(range(vocab_size), p=p.ravel())
x = np.zeros((vocab_size, 1))
x[ix] = 1
ixes.append(ix)
return ixes
n, p = 0, 0
mWxh, mWhh, mWhy = np.zeros_like(Wxh), np.zeros_like(Whh), np.zeros_like(Why)
mbh, mby = np.zeros_like(bh), np.zeros_like(by) # memory variables for Adagrad
smooth_loss = -np.log(1.0/vocab_size)*seq_length # loss at iteration 0
while True:
# prepare inputs (we're sweeping from left to right in steps seq_length long)
if p+seq_length+1 >= len(data) or n == 0:
hprev = np.zeros((hidden_size,1)) # reset RNN memory
p = 0 # go from start of data
inputs = [char_to_ix[ch] for ch in data[p:p+seq_length]]
targets = [char_to_ix[ch] for ch in data[p+1:p+seq_length+1]]
# sample from the model now and then
if n % 100 == 0:
sample_ix = sample(hprev, inputs[0], 200)
txt = ''.join(ix_to_char[ix] for ix in sample_ix)
print '----\n %s \n----' % (txt, )
# forward seq_length characters through the net and fetch gradient
loss, dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby, hprev = lossFun(inputs, targets, hprev)
smooth_loss = smooth_loss * 0.999 + loss * 0.001
if n % 100 == 0: print 'iter %d, loss: %f' % (n, smooth_loss) # print progress
# perform parameter update with Adagrad
for param, dparam, mem in zip([Wxh, Whh, Why, bh, by],
[dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby],
[mWxh, mWhh, mWhy, mbh, mby]):
mem += dparam * dparam
param += -learning_rate * dparam / np.sqrt(mem + 1e-8) # adagrad update
p += seq_length # move data pointer
n += 1 # iteration counter
@smita-09
Copy link

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "minimal_rnn.py", line 100, in
loss, dWxh, dWhh, dWhy, dbh, dby, hprev = lossFun(inputs, targets, hprev)
File "minimal_rnn.py", line 43, in lossFun
loss += -np.log(ps[t][targets[t],0]) # softmax (cross-entropy loss)
IndexError: list index out of range

Why am I getting this error?

I was getting the same error but it seems like the reason is that your input file is too small. Try writing more stuff in your input.txt

@lanttu1243
Copy link

I made a two layer recurrent neural network based off of this and I am not sure why it does not work. So, if anyone could check out and make a PR if you find a problem?
https://github.com/lanttu1243/vanilla_recurrent_neural_network.git

@anantinfinity9796
Copy link

Hi, can anyone explain the line where we pass in the gradient through the softmax function " dy [targets[t]] -=1 ". Why are we doing this operation ??

@sashakttripathi
Copy link

To anyone finding the code hard to understand, I provide detailed explanations here: https://mkffl.github.io/ Hope it helps

Good explanation for second part of lossFunction.

@pjoer
Copy link

pjoer commented Jan 31, 2023

Could someone explain how to use this? I can't generate text. It is running though.

@ijkilchenko
Copy link

@pjoer, do you have an input.txt file (really any text file) in the same directory of this file which you should be running like python min-char-rnn.py

It seems the above was written with python2 in mind, but I just updated a few lines and got it working on Python 3.9.6: https://gist.github.com/ijkilchenko/84be862a5e18240c59b4505177c9c34c

Good luck!

@pursuemoon
Copy link

pursuemoon commented Sep 24, 2023

I have a problem in the code of line 58: dhnext = np.dot(Whh.T, dhraw). Could anyone tell me what it means?

The expression for forward propagation is:

$$ \begin{align} z_t & = W_{hh} \cdot h_{t-1} + W_{xh} \cdot x_t + b_h \tag{1}\\ h_t & = Tanh(z_t) \tag{2}\\ y_t & = W_{hy} \cdot h_t + b_y \tag{3}\\ o_t & = Softmax(y_t) \tag{4}\\ \end{align} $$

Here is the gradients expression of weights that I derived:

$$ \begin{align} \frac{\partial L}{\partial W_{hy}} & = \frac{\partial L}{\partial y_t} \otimes {h_t}^T \tag{a}\\ \frac{\partial L}{\partial W_{hh}} & = {\color{red} {W_{hy}}^T \cdot \frac{\partial L}{\partial y_t} \odot Tanh'(z_t)} \otimes {h_{t-1}}^T \tag{b}\\ \frac{\partial L}{\partial W_{xh}} & = {\color{red} {W_{hy}}^T \cdot \frac{\partial L}{\partial y_t} \odot Tanh'(z_t)} \otimes x_t^T \tag{c} \end{align} $$

It is easy to see that the red part is what dhraw represents in the code. And we can get dWxh and dWhh from formula (b) and formula (c) without dhnext. So what does dhnext mean?

@logeek404
Copy link

Stupid question : In which lines does the vanishing gradient problem manifest itself ?

It uses adaGrad optimization in the last few lines. Hence the gradient is always divided by the accumulate sum of each gradients' scaler .
mem += dparam*dparam
param += -learning_rate * dparam / np.sqrt(mem+1e-8)

However , I find that the mem and param are all local variables in the loop. Don't know if the implementation of adaGrad is correct.

@logeek404
Copy link

I have a problem in the code of line 58: dhnext = np.dot(Whh.T, dhraw). Could anyone tell me what it means?

The expression for forward propagation is:

(1)zt=Whh⋅ht−1+Wxh⋅xt+bh(2)ht=Tanh(zt)(3)yt=Why⋅ht+by(4)ot=Softmax(yt)

Here is the gradients expression of weights that I derived:

(a)∂L∂Whh=∂L∂yt⊗htT(b)∂L∂Whh=WhyT⋅∂L∂yt⊙Tanh′(zt)⊗ht−1T(c)∂L∂Wxh=WhyT⋅∂L∂yt⊙Tanh′(zt)⊗xtT

It is easy to see that the red part is what dhraw represents in the code. And we can get dWxh and dWhh from formula (b) and formula (c) without dhnext. So what does dhnext mean?
image

Since dh means the gradient of loss wrt the hidden state, there are two ways the gradients flow(back propogation). From the equation and rnn structure we learn that the hidden state feeds forward to a output and next hidden state. The dhnext represents the gradient update for current state from the next hidden state. Note that dhnext is zero at first iteration because for the last-layer (unrolled) of rnn , there 's not a gradient update flow from the next hidden state.
Hope this will help you .

@pursuemoon
Copy link

I have a problem in the code of line 58: dhnext = np.dot(Whh.T, dhraw). Could anyone tell me what it means?
The expression for forward propagation is:
(1)zt=Whh⋅ht−1+Wxh⋅xt+bh(2)ht=Tanh(zt)(3)yt=Why⋅ht+by(4)ot=Softmax(yt)
Here is the gradients expression of weights that I derived:
(a)∂L∂Whh=∂L∂yt⊗htT(b)∂L∂Whh=WhyT⋅∂L∂yt⊙Tanh′(zt)⊗ht−1T(c)∂L∂Wxh=WhyT⋅∂L∂yt⊙Tanh′(zt)⊗xtT
It is easy to see that the red part is what dhraw represents in the code. And we can get dWxh and dWhh from formula (b) and formula (c) without dhnext. So what does dhnext mean?
image

Since dh means the gradient of loss wrt the hidden state, there are two ways the gradients flow(back propogation). From the equation and rnn structure we learn that the hidden state feeds forward to a output and next hidden state. The dhnext represents the gradient update for current state from the next hidden state. Note that dhnext is zero at first iteration because for the last-layer (unrolled) of rnn , there 's not a gradient update flow from the next hidden state. Hope this will help you .

Thank you so much for your replying. I missed the partial derivative wrt the next hidden state.

@kefei-cs19
Copy link

@logeek404

However , I find that the mem and param are all local variables in the loop. Don't know if the implementation of adaGrad is correct.

mem and param point to the numpy ndarrays from the zip, and += updates their values in-place.

@Mr-Second
Copy link

Mr-Second commented Dec 11, 2023 via email

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment