Python matrices code meaning snippet

Question

I was wondering what the for lines in this code are supposed to do. This is a snippet of code I need help with:

# iterate through rows of X

for i in range(len(X)):

   # iterate through columns of Y

   for j in range(len(Y[0])):

       # iterate through rows of Y

       for k in range(len(Y)):

           result[i][j] += X[i][k] * Y[k][j]



for r in result:

   print(r)

Answer 1

This code multiplies matrices X and Y and puts the resulting product into matrix result. It then prints the matrix result row by row, so it looks like a matrix on the screen.

For this snippet to work, matrices X, Y and result must already be set up--X and Y with their values, and result with the right shape (numbers of rows and columns) but with meaningless values that will be overwritten.

The expression len(X) returns the number of rows in X, while len(Y[0]) returns the number of columns of Y, at least if X and Y were set up properly. The rest of the code is the standard way to multiply two matrices, with each entry in result calculated as the scalar product of a row of X with a column of Y. Note that there is no error checking in this code, not even that the number of columns of X equals the number of rows of Y.

Do you understand matrix multiplication and how Python stores a matrix in a list of lists, or do you need more explanation?

Python matrices code meaning snippet

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