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TensorFlow Probability Style Guide

This page contains style decisions that both developers and users of TensorFlow Probability should follow to increase the readability of their code, reduce the number of errors, and promote consistency.

TensorFlow Style

Follow the TensorFlow style guide and documentation guide, and in particular the TensorFlow code lint. Below are additional TensorFlow conventions not noted in those guides. (In the future, these noted conventions may be moved upstream.)

  1. The name is TensorFlow, not Tensorflow.

  2. Use name_scope at the beginning of every Python function.

    Justification: it’s easier to debug TF graphs when they align with Python code.

  3. Run all Tensor args through tf.convert_to_tensor immediately after name_scope.

    Justification: not doing so can lead to surprising results when computing gradients. It can also lead to unnecessary graph ops as subsequent TF calls will keep creating a tensor from the same op.

  4. Every module should define the constant __all__ in order to list all public members of the module.

    Justification: __all__ is an explicit enumeration of what's intended to be public. It also governs what's imported when using from foo import * (although we do not use star-import w/in Google, users may.)

  5. Use ticks for any Python objects, types, or code. E.g., write `Tensor` instead of Tensor.

TensorFlow Probability Style

Below are TensorFlow Probability-specific conventions. In the event of conflict, they supersede all previous conventions.

  1. Importing submodule aliases. Use the Pythonic style from tensorflow_probability import sts. For now, do not use this style for tfd, tfb, and tfe; use variable assignment via tfd = tfp.distributions. We will change the latter to use the Pythonic style in the future.

  2. Examples in Docstrings. Write a #### Examples subsection below Args, Returns, Raises, etc. to illustrate examples. If the docstring's last line is a fence bracket (```) closing a code snippet, add an empty line before closing the docstring with """. This properly displays the code snippet.

    Justification: Users regularly need to remind themselves of args and semantics. But rarely look at examples more than the first time. But since examples are usually long (which is great!) it means they have to do a lot of annoying scrolling ...unless Examples follow Args/Returns/Raises.

  3. Citations in Docstrings. Write a #### References subsection at the bottom of any docstring with citations. Use ICLR’s bibliography style to write references; for example, order entries by the first author's last name. Add a link to the paper if the publication is open source (ideally, arXiv).

    Write in-paragraph citations in general, e.g., [(Tran and Blei, 2018)][1]. Write in-text citations when the citation is a noun, e.g., [Tran and Blei (2018)][1]. Write citations with more than two authors using et al., e.g., [(Tran et al., 2018)][1]. Separate multiple citations with semicolon, e.g., ([Tran and Blei, 2018][1]; [Gelman and Rubin, 1992][2]).

    Examples:

    #### References

# technical report
[1]: Tony Finch. Incremental calculation of weighted mean and variance.
     _Technical Report_, 2009.
     http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/fanf2/hermes/doc/antiforgery/stats.pdf

# journal
[2]: Andrew Gelman and Donald B. Rubin. Inference from Iterative Simulation
     Using Multiple Sequences. _Statistical Science_, 7(4):457-472, 1992.

# arXiv preprint
# use "et al." for papers with too many authors to maintain
[3]: Aaron van den Oord et al. Parallel WaveNet: Fast High-Fidelity Speech
     Synthesis. _arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.10433_, 2017.
     https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.10433

# conference
[4]: Yeming Wen, Paul Vicol, Jimmy Ba, Dustin Tran, and Roger Grosse.
     Flipout: Efficient Pseudo-Independent Weight Perturbations on
     Mini-Batches. In _International Conference on Learning
     Representations_, 2018.
     https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04386

  4. When doing float math over literals eg use 1. instead of 1 or 1.0.

    • Using 1. is another line of defense against an automatic casting mistake. (Using 1.0 is also such a defense but is not minimal.)

  5. Prefer using named args for functions' 2nd args onward.

    • Definitely use named args for 2nd args onward in docstrings.

  6. Use names which describe semantics, not computation or mathematics, e.g., avoid xp1 = x + 1 or tfd.Normal(loc=mu, scale=sigma).

  7. Prefer inlining intermediates which are used once.

    • For intermediates, usually the actual code is better documentation than a variable. However if the intermediate math is not self-documenting, using an intermediate variable is ok--just ensure it has a great name!

    Justification: intermediates clutter scope and make it hard to see dependencies.

  8. Use literals, not tf.constants. Never use tf.constant in the API (user-side code is ok!). E.g., don't do: two_pi = tf.constant(2. * np.pi).

    • While using tf.constant may reduce graph size, it makes for substantially harder to read code.
    • It also means you lose the benefit of automatic dtype casting (which is done only for literals).

  9. Avoid LaTeX in docstrings.

    • It is not rendered in many (if not most) editors and can be hard to read for both LaTeX experts and non-experts.

  10. Write docstring and comment math using ASCII friendly notation; python using operators. E.g., x**2 better than x^2, x[i, j] better than x_{i,j}, sum{ f(x[i]) : i=1...n } better than \sum_{i=1}^n f(x_i) int{sin(x) dx: x in [0, 2 pi]} better than \int_0^{2\pi} sin(x) dx.

    • The more we stick to python style, the more someone can copy/paste/execute.
    • Python style is usually easier to read as ASCII.

  11. All public functions require docstrings with: one line description, Args, Returns, Raises (if raises exceptions).

    • Returns docstrings should be in the same format as Args, eg, of the form "name: Description." Part of the rationale is that we are suggesting a reasonable variable name for the returned object(s).

  12. Regard *args and/or **kwargs as features of last resort.

  13. Prefer using the most specific TF operator. E.g,

    • Use tf.squared_difference(x, y) over (x - y)**2.
    • Use tf.rsqrt over 1. / tf.sqrt(x).

  14. Worry about gradients! (It's often not automatic for API builders!)

  15. When forced to choose between FLOPS and numerical accuracy, prefer numerical accuracy.

  16. Avoid tf.cast if possible. Eg, prefer tf.where(pred, a, b) over tf.cast(cond, dtype=a.dtype) * a + (1 - tf.cast(cond, dtype=b.dtype) * b

  17. Preserve static shape hints.

  18. Name management. Follow these conventions for indicating which names are internal vs external:

    • Start names of private methods and private module functions with an underscore.
    • List top-level classes and functions that are meant to be visible outside a module in its __all__ constant.
    • Import any names that are meant to be visible to clients of a package into that package's __init__.py file. (A name that is public in a module but not imported into __init__.py is "package private".)
    • Use TensorFlow's remove_undocumented feature in each __init__.py file to seal the package's methods.

  19. Submodule names should be singular, except where they overlap to TF.

    Justification: Having plural looks strange in user code, ie, tf.optimizer.Foo reads nicer than tf.optimizers.Foo since submodules are only used to access a single, specific thing (at a time).

  20. Use tf.newaxis rather than None to tf.expand_dims.

    Justification: Both work but only one is self-documenting.

  21. Use '{}'.format() rather than '' % for string formatting.

    Justification: PEP 3101 and Python official tutorials: "...this old style of formatting will eventually be removed from the language, str.format() should generally be used."

  22. Prefer single quotes ('hello world') to double quotes ("hello world") for single-line string literals. However, when using triple quotes for multiline literals (docstrings, etc.), prefer """ (three double quotes) to '''.

    Justification: single quotes are slightly faster to type. They also avoid the need to escape double-quotes that occur organically in English text (at the cost of needing to escape contractions, which are debatably more common but can also often be avoided).

  23. When calling tf.convert_to_tensor, try to specify in advance a user-friendly dtype. If multiple Tensors must be compatible, use dtype_util.common_dtype([arg1, arg2], tf.float32) to come up with a dtype that will be compatible across literals (even ints will work here), Tensors, and Numpy objects. When converting a user-provided literal to a Tensor (see e.g. Distribution._call_log_prob), specify the dtype to tf.convert_to_tensor if it is available.

  24. Prefer overloaded operators on Tensors (+, -, etc.) to explicit method calls (tf.add, tf.sub, etc.). Exceptions:

    • Prefer tf.equal to == when checking element-wise equality, because the semantics of the latter are inconsistent between eager and graph (tf.function) modes.
    • Use & and | only if you want bitwise logic. Note that these are equivalent to logical ops only if all inputs are bools or are in {0, 1}.