{"action":"created","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/17839","repository_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/17839/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/17839/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/17839/events","html_url":"https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/17839","id":306565880,"node_id":"MDU6SXNzdWUzMDY1NjU4ODA=","number":17839,"title":"Beam search terminology","user":{"login":"MattShannon","id":752825,"node_id":"MDQ6VXNlcjc1MjgyNQ==","avatar_url":"https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/752825?v=4","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon","html_url":"https://github.com/MattShannon","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[{"id":299643928,"node_id":"MDU6TGFiZWwyOTk2NDM5Mjg=","url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow/labels/stat:contributions%20welcome","name":"stat:contributions welcome","color":"009800","default":false},{"id":284443156,"node_id":"MDU6TGFiZWwyODQ0NDMxNTY=","url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow/labels/type:docs","name":"type:docs","color":"c7def8","default":false}],"state":"closed","locked":false,"assignee":null,"assignees":[],"milestone":null,"comments":5,"created_at":"2018-03-19T17:47:08Z","updated_at":"2018-09-13T03:36:08Z","closed_at":"2018-09-12T16:38:57Z","author_association":"NONE","body":"(This issue is with terminology used in documentation and code. System information not applicable.)\r\n\r\nThe documentation and code in tf.contrib.seq2seq.BeamSearchDecoder and friends seems to use \"beam\" to mean \"search state\", whereas beam conventionally means \"a collection of search states\". This non-standard usage makes for confusing documentation!\r\n\r\nExamples in documentation at https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/contrib/seq2seq/BeamSearchDecoder:\r\n\r\n\"The BeamSearchDecoder shuffles its beams\" \r\n\"beam_width: Python integer, the number of beams\" \r\n\r\nOr in code:\r\n\r\nhttps://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/838a8f54f92452a15e3bb62a23ad5cd67e86933f/tensorflow/contrib/seq2seq/python/ops/beam_search_decoder.py#L144\r\n\r\nThe conventional search algorithm terminology as I understand it, and attested by wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_search) and recent academic usage (http://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/05/Papers/0596.pdf), is that beam search is called beam search because it keeps a beam of search states in memory. The beam refers to the collection of search states, not the individual search states (I presume by the analogy that a beam of light illuminates certain objects but not others that fall outside the beam)."},"comment":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/comments/420872659","html_url":"https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/17839#issuecomment-420872659","issue_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/17839","id":420872659,"node_id":"MDEyOklzc3VlQ29tbWVudDQyMDg3MjY1OQ==","user":{"login":"MattShannon","id":752825,"node_id":"MDQ6VXNlcjc1MjgyNQ==","avatar_url":"https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/752825?v=4","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon","html_url":"https://github.com/MattShannon","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/MattShannon/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"created_at":"2018-09-13T03:36:08Z","updated_at":"2018-09-13T03:36:08Z","author_association":"NONE","body":"That PR doesn't fix the issue. It's just a straight-up replace of \"beam\" for \"search state\" which leaves the documentation ungrammatical or nonsensical in many places. (I'm afraid I don't have bandwidth at the moment to make the docs better though.)"}}
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