Array Programming Fundamentals

This chapter introduces array programming fundamentals using NumPy. While modern deep learning often happens in frameworks like PyTorch or JAX, NumPy remains the lingua franca of the Python data ecosystem. Crucially, the NumPy API provides the conceptual foundation for the tensor operations used in PyTorch and is adopted directly by JAX (jax.numpy). By mastering NumPy, you are learning not just a library, but the mental model required to manipulate high-dimensional data and understand the vectorized operations that drive ML performance.