beginner/examples_tensor/polynomial_tensor

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PyTorch: Tensors

Created On: Dec 03, 2020 | Last Updated: Sep 29, 2025 | Last Verified: Nov 05, 2024

A third order polynomial, trained to predict \(y=\sin(x)\) from \(-\pi\) to \(\pi\) by minimizing squared Euclidean distance.

This implementation uses PyTorch tensors to manually compute the forward pass, loss, and backward pass.

A PyTorch Tensor is basically the same as a numpy array: it does not know anything about deep learning or computational graphs or gradients, and is just a generic n-dimensional array to be used for arbitrary numeric computation.

The biggest difference between a numpy array and a PyTorch Tensor is that a PyTorch Tensor can run on either CPU or GPU. To run operations on the GPU, just cast the Tensor to a cuda datatype.

99 51.69994354248047
199 38.19682312011719
299 28.968822479248047
399 22.655029296875
499 18.330175399780273
599 15.364336013793945
699 13.328136444091797
799 11.928587913513184
899 10.96556568145752
999 10.302155494689941
1099 9.844672203063965
1199 9.52884578704834
1299 9.310563087463379
1399 9.159565925598145
1499 9.055002212524414
1599 8.982522964477539
1699 8.932229995727539
1799 8.897298812866211
1899 8.87302017211914
1999 8.85612678527832
Result: y = -0.00588524853810668 + 0.859498143196106 x + 0.001015303423628211 x^2 + -0.09372258931398392 x^3

import torch
import math


dtype = torch.float
device = torch.device("cpu")
# device = torch.device("cuda:0") # Uncomment this to run on GPU

# Create random input and output data
x = torch.linspace(-math.pi, math.pi, 2000, device=device, dtype=dtype)
y = torch.sin(x)

# Randomly initialize weights
a = torch.randn((), device=device, dtype=dtype)
b = torch.randn((), device=device, dtype=dtype)
c = torch.randn((), device=device, dtype=dtype)
d = torch.randn((), device=device, dtype=dtype)

learning_rate = 1e-6
for t in range(2000):
    # Forward pass: compute predicted y
    y_pred = a + b * x + c * x ** 2 + d * x ** 3

    # Compute and print loss
    loss = (y_pred - y).pow(2).sum().item()
    if t % 100 == 99:
        print(t, loss)

    # Backprop to compute gradients of a, b, c, d with respect to loss
    grad_y_pred = 2.0 * (y_pred - y)
    grad_a = grad_y_pred.sum()
    grad_b = (grad_y_pred * x).sum()
    grad_c = (grad_y_pred * x ** 2).sum()
    grad_d = (grad_y_pred * x ** 3).sum()

    # Update weights using gradient descent
    a -= learning_rate * grad_a
    b -= learning_rate * grad_b
    c -= learning_rate * grad_c
    d -= learning_rate * grad_d


print(f'Result: y = {a.item()} + {b.item()} x + {c.item()} x^2 + {d.item()} x^3')