# Meaning of different softmax notations in papers

I was wondering if the different notations of the softmax input mean different things especially about the size of the output. For example, in the paper Pointer Networks, it sometimes state the input of the softmax with the subscript j,

and in another equation, it removed the subscript

Does the one with the subscript j imply that we produce a distribution over the elements of each ui and the one without the j subscript mean a distribution over all the ui vectors?

I thought it could be a typo, but it happened again in another paper Reinforcement Learning for Solving the Vehicle Routing Problem. Here:

The notation $a^i_j = \text{softmax}(u^i_j)$ is just an common abuse of notation which should really be written as $a^i_j = \text{softmax}(u^i)_j$, since $u^i$ is the vector which you must compute softmax on, and then you want the $j$th element of the resulting vector. The subscript is then left out of $P(C_i|C_1,\ldots,P) = \text{softmax}(u^i)$ because the LHS is a categorical probability distribution whose parameters are a vector given by the RHS.
• Thanks, @shimao. From what you've written, it looks like there is no difference between the equation for $a^i$ (a vector of length $n$) and $P(C_i = j|C_1,\ldots,C_{i-1},\mathcal{P})$ (also of length n). Is this correct? Jan 21 '20 at 2:04