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I'm not certain if my error lies in my understanding of python's sklearn or of t-SNE, but I have (essentially), the following code:

import numpy as np
from sklearn.manifold import TSNE
...

latent_codes = np.asarray(latent_codes)
model = TSNE(n_components=2, random_state=0)
targets = model.fit_transform(latent_codes)

import pdb
pdb.set_trace()

Now, when I take advantage of pdb to examine latent_codes, I find it's a 40x50 zero matrix:

(Pdb) latent_codes.shape
(40, 50)

(Pdb) latent_codes
array([[ 0.,  0.,  0., ...,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0., ...,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0., ...,  0.,  0.,  0.],
        ..., 
       [ 0.,  0.,  0., ...,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0., ...,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0., ...,  0.,  0.,  0.]])
(Pdb) np.count_nonzero(latent_codes)
0

However, the targets produced by model_fit_transform are all different:

(Pdb) targets
array([[ -68.17034118,   59.8387551 ],
   [ 154.31303231,  -65.25843496],
   [-116.26644151,  -19.97313287],
   [  25.15679123,  -96.2950044 ],
   [ -21.30201657,   15.49542397],
   [ 117.35081217,   44.15759738],
   [ -82.23108406,  -48.82985134],
   [-113.48912279,   26.86769182],
   [  63.0661867 ,  -77.18010188],
   [-214.31557952,  186.65681657],
   [  41.81882958,  128.70962697],
   [   4.56304673,  -14.75060863],
   [ -64.14735674,   21.53516755],
   [ -51.69388635, -159.27904258],
   [ -47.77084845, -115.1462873 ],
   [ 131.90001156,   -6.43364854],
   [  -0.83806249, -128.14477442],
   [-296.70119624, -119.19975211],
   [ -46.69551791,   95.57097896],
   [   5.87913502,   94.59336748],
   [  20.06775981,   29.26705814],
   [  50.24510794,    1.10575949],
   [  35.81033393,  -41.01231103],
   [ 273.79224551,  198.21000606],
   [ -28.41723332,  -40.45356725],
   [-109.32362451,   82.86647462],
   [ 133.32828608,   97.65628466],
   [-108.9115903 ,  -87.49420981],
   [ -48.84660715,  -76.67380263],
   [  14.60874986, -173.3446314 ],
   [  80.21260263,  -28.05786872],
   [  66.4516378 , -128.04476666],
   [  73.15296956,   35.96795971],
   [  80.93310524,   91.51665493],
   [ -56.73663254,  -15.00847778],
   [ 106.25595116,  -67.73558382],
   [   0.01308238,  -66.19634508],
   [ -16.16269284,   56.56122915],
   [ -24.14615918,  136.37358297],
   [  40.32559439,   67.55044349]])

If I'm trying to project the same 50-dim point to a 2-dim space 40 times, shouldn't I get the same 2-dim point 40 times?

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  • $\begingroup$ t-SNE attempts to have the low dim projections of the high dimensional data reflect the distance between those points. The distance between each of my 50-dim points is zero. Clearly, these distances are not being preserved. If I had a non-degenerate case of 50-dim points, then I would not be surprised to get different projections from repeated t-SNE projections. As it is, I'm very uneasy that a single high-dim point, from a single run of t-SNE get projected to so many low-dim points. This does not seem to be very effective at preserving the inter-point distance. $\endgroup$
    – user1245262
    Commented Jul 19, 2016 at 1:37

1 Answer 1

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No you need to set up a random seed to get the same values .

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  • $\begingroup$ This is a bit brief by our standards, although it does seem to be an answer to the question. I think it would benefit from mentioning why setting the seed is necessary. $\endgroup$
    – Silverfish
    Commented Jul 18, 2016 at 7:36
  • $\begingroup$ If I had multiple runs on the same dataset, I'd agree that I needed to set up a random seed. But, this is from a single run on a single dataset. $\endgroup$
    – user1245262
    Commented Jul 19, 2016 at 1:38

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