Stride
A stride is the step interval between successive positions or elements accessed, selected, or processed along a dimension or sequence.
Math and Architectures of Deep Learning
The step size with which a convolutional kernel moves across the input, affecting the output size in convolution and transposed convolution.
- How it is used
- Controls convolution and pooling stepping to determine which local positions produce output values and how feature maps are downsampled.
- How deep it goes
- Derives 1D output size from kernel bounds, then extends stepping to multidimensional and transposed convolutions.
- Examples
- Uses length-7 1D averaging windows, 3D video-volume stepping, PyTorch Conv1d calls, and 2 × 2 stride-2 pooling.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via PyTorch convolution or pooling parameters and calculate resulting convolution or transposed-convolution output sizes.
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Learn Generative AI with PyTorch
The step-size parameter that controls how far a convolutional operation moves and, in transposed convolution, how much upsampling occurs.
- How it is used
- Controls convolutional scanning and spatial downsampling in image-processing networks.
- How deep it goes
- Explains movement, output-size effects, padding interaction, numerical calculations, and VAE tensor-shape changes.
- Examples
- Uses a 3 × 3 image, fixed 2 × 2 weights, stride 2, padding 1, and a stride-based VAE encoder.
- What you can do after
- Apply stride via PyTorch Conv2d arguments and predict its effects on feature-map dimensions.
Fast Python: High performance techniques for large datasets
- How it is used
- Uses strides to describe element access in array dimensions and enable efficient NumPy views.
- How deep it goes
- Defines strides as byte steps and demonstrates them with reshaping, transposition, slicing, and image views.
- Examples
- Demonstrates reshaped and transposed arrays, reversed dimensions, and flipped, rotated, or sliced images.
- What you can do after
- Understand how shape and strides describe NumPy views over existing array data.
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Deep Learning with PyTorch, Second Edition
Tensor metadata describing its shape and how elements are laid out and indexed in storage, including step size between positions.
- How it is used
- Explains how PyTorch tensors index storage and why views, slicing, transposition, and reshaping can avoid data copies.
- How deep it goes
- Derives the indexing formula and follows stride through views, transposes, reshaping, and contiguity, stopping short of deeper memory-system details.
- Examples
- Uses point tensors, indexed subtensors, transposes, contiguous copies, daily bike sequences, and size-offset-stride exercises.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose tensor layouts by predicting stride, storage offset, shared storage, and contiguity after indexing or reshaping.
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Grokking AI Algorithms, Second Edition
A stride is the spatial step size by which a convolutional filter moves across an input.
- How it is used
- Shrinks convolutional feature maps by increasing the distance between successive filter positions.
- How deep it goes
- Explains filter movement, padding, and output-size calculation through an 8×8-to-4×4 example and implementation.
- Examples
- Uses a 4×4 filter with stride 2 to reduce eight 8×8 feature maps to 4×4 maps.
- What you can do after
- Build it from scratch by configuring stride and calculating output dimensions in a downsampling convolution.
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Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)
The step size by which the sliding window advances between sampled training examples.
- How it is used
- Controls how training contexts are sampled from tokenized text for GPT-style input-target pairs.
- How deep it goes
- Defines stride and implements it in the dataset loop, including overlap behavior and context-size interactions.
- Examples
- Demonstrates stride values of 1, 2, and 4 with context sizes of 2, 4, and 8.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via GPTDatasetV1 and DataLoader to control overlap among sampled training contexts.
Read how Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) explains stride →
Natural Language Processing in Action, Second Edition
A stride is the number of input positions by which a convolution kernel moves between successive applications.
- How it is used
- Uses stride to control how convolution kernels scan token sequences and produce pattern-location maps.
- How deep it goes
- Explains stride through adjacent-token experiments and output-length formulas, but stops short of broader optimization guidance.
- Examples
- Demonstrates stride with part-of-speech bigrams and PyTorch Conv1d configurations using stride 1.
- What you can do after
- Apply stride by selecting a scan step and calculating the resulting convolution sequence length.
Read how Natural Language Processing in Action, Second Edition explains stride →
Python How-To
- How it is used
- Uses stride to select spaced elements from a sequence and to replace selected positions in a mutable list.
- How deep it goes
- Explains stride in slice notation, positive and negative directions, and list replacement at strided positions.
- Examples
- Uses list slices to select every third element, reverse a list, and replace every second item.
- What you can do after
- Apply Python slice notation to select spaced elements or replace selected positions in a list.
Related concepts
- tensor shapecontrasts with · A tensor shape is an ordered sequence of dimension sizes specifying the extent of a tensor or array along each axis.
- offsetproduces · An offset is a position or displacement measured relative to a reference point, such as within an ordered sequence, memory region, or layout.
- dilated convolutioncontrasts with · A dilated convolution applies a filter whose sampling positions are spaced apart, expanding the receptive field without proportionally increasing kernel size or parameters.
- boundary checkused by · A boundary check is a test that verifies whether a value or operation lies within an allowed range or valid data extent.
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