Backpropagating through scatter add

1

Hey, I am trying to sum values in a Tensor based on the index of the output array.
Here is an example

import torch
from torch.autograd import Variable
import numpy as np

data = Variable(torch.from_numpy(np.array([3, 2, 1, 8, 7], dtype=np.float32)), requires_grad=True)
idx = Variable(torch.from_numpy(np.array([0, 0, 1, 1, 2], dtype=np.int64)), requires_grad=False)

So I would like to obtain a Variable with values [5, 9, 7] which I can backpropagate through.

I tried doing it with

out = Variable(torch.zeros(3), requires_grad=True)
out.scatter_add_(0, idx, data)

but this won’t work as I am doing an in-place operation on a leaf Variable.

What is the correct way of doing this?

2

Hi,

A simple fix is just to clone out before performing the scatter on it.

1 Like
3

Ok that worked! But I don’t get the logic behind it.

4

A “leaf Variable” is a Variable created by the user for which you want the gradients.
The thing is that the original value could be needed by other stuff when performing the backward pass without pytorch knowing about it and so some computed gradients would be wrong.

1 Like
6

Nevermind. This works

out = Variable(torch.zeros(3), requires_grad=True).clone()
out = out.scatter_add_(0, idx, data)
out = out.scatter_add_(0, idx, data)
7

Also you can use the non-inplace version:
out3 = out.scatter_add(0, idx, data).scatter_add(0, idx2, data2)

8

Oops, sorry I deleted my previous post and cannot restore it. Thanks in any case!

9

Hi,

If I want to use some part of values in out by using scatter, for example, I would choose 1,2,3 index of out, is it possible to use backpropagate?

Thank you in advance

10

The scatter/gather ops are differentiable, so it will work