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numpy - column-wise and row-wise sums of a given 2d matrix

I have this numpy matrix (ndarray).
array([[ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
[ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10],
[11, 12, 13, 14, 15],
[16, 17, 18, 19, 20],
[21, 22, 23, 24, 25]])
I want to calculate the column-wise and row-wise sums.
I know this is done by calling respectively
np.sum(mat, axis=0) ### column-wise sums
np.sum(mat, axis=1) ### row-wise sums
but I cannot understand these two calls.
Why is axis 0 giving me the sums column-by-column?!
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
I thought the rows are axis 0, and the columns are axis 1.
What I am seeing as a behavior here looks counter-intuitive
(but I am sure it's OK, I guess I am just missing something important).
I am just looking for some intuitive explanation here.
Thanks in advance.

Intuition around arrays and axes
I want to offer 3 types of intuitions here.
Graphical (How to imagine them visually)
Physical (How they are physically stored)
Logical (How to work with them logically)
Graphical intuition
Consider a numpy array as a n-dimensional object. This n-dimensional object contains elements in each of the directions as below.
Axes in this representation are the direction of the tensor. So, a 2D matrix has only 2 axes, while a 4D tensor has 4 axes.
Sum in a given axis can be essentially considered as a reduction in that direction. Imagine a 3D tensor being squashed in such a way that it becomes flat (a 2D tensor). The axis tells us which direction to squash or reduce it in.
Physical intuition
Numpy stores its ndarrays as contiguous blocks of memory. Each element is stored in a sequential manner every n bytes after the previous.
(images referenced from this excellent SO post)
So if your 3D array looks like this -
Then in memory its stores as -
When retrieving an element (or a block of elements), NumPy calculates how many strides (bytes) it needs to traverse to get the next element in that direction/axis. So, for the above example, for axis=2 it has to traverse 8 bytes (depending on the datatype) but for axis=1 it has to traverse 8*4 bytes, and axis=0 it needs 8*8 bytes.
Axes in this representation is basically the series of next elements after a given stride. Consider the following array -
print(X)
print(X.strides)
[[0 2 1 4 0 0 0]
[5 0 0 0 0 0 0]
[8 0 0 0 0 0 0]
[0 0 0 0 0 0 0]
[0 0 1 0 0 0 0]
[0 0 0 1 0 0 0]]
#Strides (bytes) required to traverse in each axis.
(56, 8)
In the above array, every element after 56 bytes from any element is the next element in axis=0 and every element after 8 bytes from any element is in axis=1. (except from the last element)
Sum or reduction in this regards means taking a sum of every element in that strided series. So, sum over axis=0 means that I need to sum [0,5,8,0,0,0], [2,0,0,0,0,0], ... and sum over axis=1 means just summing [0 2 1 4 0 0 0] , [5 0 0 0 0 0 0], ...
Logical intuition
This interpretation has to do with element groupings. A numpy stores its ndarrays as groups of groups of groups ... of elements. Elements are grouped together and contain the last axis (axis=-1). Then another grouping over them creates another axis before it (axis=-2). The final outermost group is the axis=0.
These are 3 groups of 2 groups of 5 elements.
Similarly, the shape of a NumPy array is also determined by the same.
1D_array = [1,2,3]
2D_array = [[1,2,3]]
3D_array = [[[1,2,3]]]
...
Axes in this representation are the group in which elements are stored. The outermost group is axis=0 and the innermost group is axis=-1.
Sum or reduction in this regard means that I reducing elements across that specific group or axis. So, sum over axis=-1 means I sum over the innermost groups. Consider a (6, 5, 8) dimensional tensor. When I say I want a sum over some axis, I want to reduce the elements lying in that grouping / direction to a single value that is equal to their sum.
So,
np.sum(arr, axis=-1) will reduce the inner most groups (of length 8) into a single value and return (6,5,1) or (6,5).
np.sum(arr, axis=-2) will reduce the elements that lie in the 1st axis (or -2nd axis) direction and reduce those to a single value returning (6,1,8) or (6,8)
np.sum(arr, axis=0) will similarly reduce the tensor to (1,5,8) or (5,8).
Hope these 3 intuitions are beneficial to anyone trying to understand how axes and NumPy tensors work in general and how to build an intuitive understanding to work better with them.

Let's start with a one dimensional example:
a, b, c, d, e = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4
arr = np.array([a, b, c, d, e])
If you do,
arr.sum(0)
Output
10
That is the sum of the elements of the array
a + b + c + d + e
Now before moving on a 2 dimensional example. Let's clarify that in numpy the sum of two 1 dimensional arrays is done element wise, for example:
a = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
b = np.array([6, 7, 8, 9, 10])
print(a + b)
Output
[ 7 9 11 13 15]
Now if we change our initial variables to arrays, instead of scalars, to create a two dimensional array and do the sum
a = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
b = np.array([6, 7, 8, 9, 10])
c = np.array([11, 12, 13, 14, 15])
d = np.array([16, 17, 18, 19, 20])
e = np.array([21, 22, 23, 24, 25])
arr = np.array([a, b, c, d, e])
print(arr.sum(0))
Output
[55 60 65 70 75]
The output is the same as for the 1 dimensional example, i.e. the sum of the elements of the array:
a + b + c + d + e
Just that now the elements of the arrays are 1 dimensional arrays and the sum of those elements is applied. Now before explaining the results, for axis = 1, let's consider an alternative notation to the notation across axis = 0, basically:
np.array([arr[0, :], arr[1, :], arr[2, :], arr[3, :], arr[4, :]]).sum(0) # [55 60 65 70 75]
That is we took full slices in all other indices that were not the first dimension. If we swap to:
res = np.array([arr[:, 0], arr[:, 1], arr[:, 2], arr[:, 3], arr[:, 4]]).sum(0)
print(res)
Output
[ 15 40 65 90 115]
We get the result of the sum along axis=1. So to sum it up you are always summing elements of the array. The axis will indicate how this elements are constructed.

Intuitively, 'axis 0' goes from top to bottom and 'axis 1' goes from left to right. Therefore, when you sum along 'axis 0' you get the column sum, and along 'axis 1' you get the row sum.
As you go along 'axis 0', the row number increases. As you go along 'axis 1' the column number increases.

Think of a 1-dimension array:
mat=array([ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
Its items are called by mat[0], mat[1], etc
If you do:
np.sum(mat, axis=0)
it will return 15
In the background, it sums all items with mat[0], mat[1], mat[2], mat[3], mat[4]
meaning the first index (axis=0)
Now consider a 2-D array:
mat=array([[ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
[ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10],
[11, 12, 13, 14, 15],
[16, 17, 18, 19, 20],
[21, 22, 23, 24, 25]])
When you ask for
np.sum(mat, axis=0)
it will again sum all items based on the first index (axis=0) keeping all the rest same. This means that
mat[0][1], mat[1][1], mat[2][1], mat[3][1], mat[4][1]
will give one sum
mat[0][2], mat[1][2], mat[2][2], mat[3][2], mat[4][2]
will give another one, etc
If you consider a 3-D array, the logic will be the same. Every sum will be calculated on the same axis (index) keeping all the rest same. Sums on axis=0 will be produced by:
mat[0][1][1],mat[1][1][1],mat[2][1][1],mat[3][1][1],mat[4][1][1]
etc
Sums on axis=2 will be produced by:
mat[2][3][0], mat[2][3][1], mat[2][3][2], mat[2][3][3], mat[2][3][4]
etc
I hope you understand the logic. To keep things simple in your mind, consider axis=position of index in a chain index, eg axis=3 on a 7-mensional array will be:
mat[0][0][0][this is our axis][0][0][0]

tf.gather with indices of higher dimention than input data?

Reading Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds code, I came across this snippet:
idx_ = tf.range(batch_size) * num_points
idx_ = tf.reshape(idx_, [batch_size, 1, 1])
point_cloud_flat = tf.reshape(point_cloud, [-1, num_dims])
point_cloud_neighbors = tf.gather(point_cloud_flat, nn_idx+idx_) <--- what happens here?
point_cloud_central = tf.expand_dims(point_cloud_central, axis=-2)
debugging the line I made sure that the dims are
point_cloud_flat:(32768,3) nn_idx:(32,1024,20), idx_:(32,1,1)
// indices are (32,1024,20) after broadcasting
Reading the tf.gather doc I couldn't understand what the function does with dimensions higher that the input dimensions

An equivalent function in numpy is np.take, a simple example:
import numpy as np
params = np.array([4, 3, 5, 7, 6, 8])
# Scalar indices; (output is rank(params) - 1), i.e. 0 here.
indices = 0
print(params[indices])
# Vector indices; (output is rank(params)), i.e. 1 here.
indices = [0, 1, 4]
print(params[indices]) # [4 3 6]
# Vector indices; (output is rank(params)), i.e. 1 here.
indices = [2, 3, 4]
print(params[indices]) # [5 7 6]
# Higher rank indices; (output is rank(params) + rank(indices) - 1), i.e. 2 here
indices = np.array([[0, 1, 4], [2, 3, 4]])
print(params[indices]) # equivalent to np.take(params, indices, axis=0)
# [[4 3 6]
# [5 7 6]]
In your case, the rank of indices is higher than params, so output is rank(params) + rank(indices) - 1 (i.e. 2 + 3 - 1 = 4, i.e. (32, 1024, 20, 3)). The - 1 is because the tf.gather(axis=0) and axis must be rank 0 (so a scalar) at this moment. So the indices takes the elements of the first dimension (axis=0) in a "fancy" indexing way.
EDITED:
In brief, in your case, (if I didn't misunderstand the code)
point_cloud is (32, 1024, 3), 32 batches 1024 points which have 3
coordinates.
nn_idx is (32, 1024, 20), indices of 20 neighbors of
32 batches 1024 points. The indices are for indexing in point_cloud.
nn_idx+idx_ (32, 1024, 20), indices of 20 neighbors of
32 batches 1024 points. The indices are for indexing in point_cloud_flat.
point_cloud_neighbors finally is (32, 1024,
20, 3), the same as nn_idx+idx_ except that point_cloud_neighbors are their 3 coordinates while nn_idx+idx_ are just their indices.

split numpy multidimensional array into equal pieces [duplicate]

Is there a way to slice a 2d array in numpy into smaller 2d arrays?
Example
[[1,2,3,4], -> [[1,2] [3,4]
[5,6,7,8]] [5,6] [7,8]]
So I basically want to cut down a 2x4 array into 2 2x2 arrays. Looking for a generic solution to be used on images.

There was another question a couple of months ago which clued me in to the idea of using reshape and swapaxes. The h//nrows makes sense since this keeps the first block's rows together. It also makes sense that you'll need nrows and ncols to be part of the shape. -1 tells reshape to fill in whatever number is necessary to make the reshape valid. Armed with the form of the solution, I just tried things until I found the formula that works.
You should be able to break your array into "blocks" using some combination of reshape and swapaxes:
def blockshaped(arr, nrows, ncols):
"""
Return an array of shape (n, nrows, ncols) where
n * nrows * ncols = arr.size
If arr is a 2D array, the returned array should look like n subblocks with
each subblock preserving the "physical" layout of arr.
"""
h, w = arr.shape
assert h % nrows == 0, f"{h} rows is not evenly divisible by {nrows}"
assert w % ncols == 0, f"{w} cols is not evenly divisible by {ncols}"
return (arr.reshape(h//nrows, nrows, -1, ncols)
.swapaxes(1,2)
.reshape(-1, nrows, ncols))
turns c
np.random.seed(365)
c = np.arange(24).reshape((4, 6))
print(c)
[out]:
[[ 0 1 2 3 4 5]
[ 6 7 8 9 10 11]
[12 13 14 15 16 17]
[18 19 20 21 22 23]]
into
print(blockshaped(c, 2, 3))
[out]:
[[[ 0 1 2]
[ 6 7 8]]
[[ 3 4 5]
[ 9 10 11]]
[[12 13 14]
[18 19 20]]
[[15 16 17]
[21 22 23]]]
I've posted an inverse function, unblockshaped, here, and an N-dimensional generalization here. The generalization gives a little more insight into the reasoning behind this algorithm.
Note that there is also superbatfish's
blockwise_view. It arranges the
blocks in a different format (using more axes) but it has the advantage of (1)
always returning a view and (2) being capable of handling arrays of any
dimension.

It seems to me that this is a task for numpy.split or some variant.
e.g.
a = np.arange(30).reshape([5,6]) #a.shape = (5,6)
a1 = np.split(a,3,axis=1)
#'a1' is a list of 3 arrays of shape (5,2)
a2 = np.split(a, [2,4])
#'a2' is a list of three arrays of shape (2,5), (2,5), (1,5)
If you have a NxN image you can create, e.g., a list of 2 NxN/2 subimages, and then divide them along the other axis.
numpy.hsplit and numpy.vsplit are also available.

There are some other answers that seem well-suited for your specific case already, but your question piqued my interest in the possibility of a memory-efficient solution usable up to the maximum number of dimensions that numpy supports, and I ended up spending most of the afternoon coming up with possible method. (The method itself is relatively simple, it's just that I still haven't used most of the really fancy features that numpy supports so most of the time was spent researching to see what numpy had available and how much it could do so that I didn't have to do it.)
def blockgen(array, bpa):
"""Creates a generator that yields multidimensional blocks from the given
array(_like); bpa is an array_like consisting of the number of blocks per axis
(minimum of 1, must be a divisor of the corresponding axis size of array). As
the blocks are selected using normal numpy slicing, they will be views rather
than copies; this is good for very large multidimensional arrays that are being
blocked, and for very large blocks, but it also means that the result must be
copied if it is to be modified (unless modifying the original data as well is
intended)."""
bpa = np.asarray(bpa) # in case bpa wasn't already an ndarray
# parameter checking
if array.ndim != bpa.size: # bpa doesn't match array dimensionality
raise ValueError("Size of bpa must be equal to the array dimensionality.")
if (bpa.dtype != np.int # bpa must be all integers
or (bpa < 1).any() # all values in bpa must be >= 1
or (array.shape % bpa).any()): # % != 0 means not evenly divisible
raise ValueError("bpa ({0}) must consist of nonzero positive integers "
"that evenly divide the corresponding array axis "
"size".format(bpa))
# generate block edge indices
rgen = (np.r_[:array.shape[i]+1:array.shape[i]//blk_n]
for i, blk_n in enumerate(bpa))
# build slice sequences for each axis (unfortunately broadcasting
# can't be used to make the items easy to operate over
c = [[np.s_[i:j] for i, j in zip(r[:-1], r[1:])] for r in rgen]
# Now to get the blocks; this is slightly less efficient than it could be
# because numpy doesn't like jagged arrays and I didn't feel like writing
# a ufunc for it.
for idxs in np.ndindex(*bpa):
blockbounds = tuple(c[j][idxs[j]] for j in range(bpa.size))
yield array[blockbounds]

You question practically the same as this one. You can use the one-liner with np.ndindex() and reshape():
def cutter(a, r, c):
lenr = a.shape[0]/r
lenc = a.shape[1]/c
np.array([a[i*r:(i+1)*r,j*c:(j+1)*c] for (i,j) in np.ndindex(lenr,lenc)]).reshape(lenr,lenc,r,c)
To create the result you want:
a = np.arange(1,9).reshape(2,1)
#array([[1, 2, 3, 4],
# [5, 6, 7, 8]])
cutter( a, 1, 2 )
#array([[[[1, 2]],
# [[3, 4]]],
# [[[5, 6]],
# [[7, 8]]]])

Some minor enhancement to TheMeaningfulEngineer's answer that handles the case when the big 2d array cannot be perfectly sliced into equally sized subarrays
def blockfy(a, p, q):
'''
Divides array a into subarrays of size p-by-q
p: block row size
q: block column size
'''
m = a.shape[0] #image row size
n = a.shape[1] #image column size
# pad array with NaNs so it can be divided by p row-wise and by q column-wise
bpr = ((m-1)//p + 1) #blocks per row
bpc = ((n-1)//q + 1) #blocks per column
M = p * bpr
N = q * bpc
A = np.nan* np.ones([M,N])
A[:a.shape[0],:a.shape[1]] = a
block_list = []
previous_row = 0
for row_block in range(bpc):
previous_row = row_block * p
previous_column = 0
for column_block in range(bpr):
previous_column = column_block * q
block = A[previous_row:previous_row+p, previous_column:previous_column+q]
# remove nan columns and nan rows
nan_cols = np.all(np.isnan(block), axis=0)
block = block[:, ~nan_cols]
nan_rows = np.all(np.isnan(block), axis=1)
block = block[~nan_rows, :]
## append
if block.size:
block_list.append(block)
return block_list
Examples:
a = np.arange(25)
a = a.reshape((5,5))
out = blockfy(a, 2, 3)
a->
array([[ 0, 1, 2, 3, 4],
[ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9],
[10, 11, 12, 13, 14],
[15, 16, 17, 18, 19],
[20, 21, 22, 23, 24]])
out[0] ->
array([[0., 1., 2.],
[5., 6., 7.]])
out[1]->
array([[3., 4.],
[8., 9.]])
out[-1]->
array([[23., 24.]])

For now it just works when the big 2d array can be perfectly sliced into equally sized subarrays.
The code bellow slices
a ->array([[ 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
[ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11],
[12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17],
[18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23]])
into this
block_array->
array([[[ 0, 1, 2],
[ 6, 7, 8]],
[[ 3, 4, 5],
[ 9, 10, 11]],
[[12, 13, 14],
[18, 19, 20]],
[[15, 16, 17],
[21, 22, 23]]])
p ang q determine the block size
Code
a = arange(24)
a = a.reshape((4,6))
m = a.shape[0] #image row size
n = a.shape[1] #image column size
p = 2 #block row size
q = 3 #block column size
block_array = []
previous_row = 0
for row_block in range(blocks_per_row):
previous_row = row_block * p
previous_column = 0
for column_block in range(blocks_per_column):
previous_column = column_block * q
block = a[previous_row:previous_row+p,previous_column:previous_column+q]
block_array.append(block)
block_array = array(block_array)

If you want a solution that also handles the cases when the matrix is
not equally divided, you can use this:
from operator import add
half_split = np.array_split(input, 2)
res = map(lambda x: np.array_split(x, 2, axis=1), half_split)
res = reduce(add, res)

Here is a solution based on unutbu's answer that handle case where matrix cannot be equally divided. In this case, it will resize the matrix before using some interpolation. You need OpenCV for this. Note that I had to swap ncols and nrows to make it works, didn't figured why.
import numpy as np
import cv2
import math
def blockshaped(arr, r_nbrs, c_nbrs, interp=cv2.INTER_LINEAR):
"""
arr a 2D array, typically an image
r_nbrs numbers of rows
r_cols numbers of cols
"""
arr_h, arr_w = arr.shape
size_w = int( math.floor(arr_w // c_nbrs) * c_nbrs )
size_h = int( math.floor(arr_h // r_nbrs) * r_nbrs )
if size_w != arr_w or size_h != arr_h:
arr = cv2.resize(arr, (size_w, size_h), interpolation=interp)
nrows = int(size_w // r_nbrs)
ncols = int(size_h // c_nbrs)
return (arr.reshape(r_nbrs, ncols, -1, nrows)
.swapaxes(1,2)
.reshape(-1, ncols, nrows))

a = np.random.randint(1, 9, size=(9,9))
out = [np.hsplit(x, 3) for x in np.vsplit(a,3)]
print(a)
print(out)
yields
[[7 6 2 4 4 2 5 2 3]
[2 3 7 6 8 8 2 6 2]
[4 1 3 1 3 8 1 3 7]
[6 1 1 5 7 2 1 5 8]
[8 8 7 6 6 1 8 8 4]
[6 1 8 2 1 4 5 1 8]
[7 3 4 2 5 6 1 2 7]
[4 6 7 5 8 2 8 2 8]
[6 6 5 5 6 1 2 6 4]]
[[array([[7, 6, 2],
[2, 3, 7],
[4, 1, 3]]), array([[4, 4, 2],
[6, 8, 8],
[1, 3, 8]]), array([[5, 2, 3],
[2, 6, 2],
[1, 3, 7]])], [array([[6, 1, 1],
[8, 8, 7],
[6, 1, 8]]), array([[5, 7, 2],
[6, 6, 1],
[2, 1, 4]]), array([[1, 5, 8],
[8, 8, 4],
[5, 1, 8]])], [array([[7, 3, 4],
[4, 6, 7],
[6, 6, 5]]), array([[2, 5, 6],
[5, 8, 2],
[5, 6, 1]]), array([[1, 2, 7],
[8, 2, 8],
[2, 6, 4]])]]

I publish my solution. Notice that this code doesn't' actually create copies of original array, so it works well with big data. Moreover, it doesn't crash if array cannot be divided evenly (but you can easly add condition for that by deleting ceil and checking if v_slices and h_slices are divided without rest).
import numpy as np
from math import ceil
a = np.arange(9).reshape(3, 3)
p, q = 2, 2
width, height = a.shape
v_slices = ceil(width / p)
h_slices = ceil(height / q)
for h in range(h_slices):
for v in range(v_slices):
block = a[h * p : h * p + p, v * q : v * q + q]
# do something with a block
This code changes (or, more precisely, gives you direct access to part of an array) this:
[[0 1 2]
[3 4 5]
[6 7 8]]
Into this:
[[0 1]
[3 4]]
[[2]
[5]]
[[6 7]]
[[8]]
If you need actual copies, Aenaon code is what you are looking for.
If you are sure that big array can be divided evenly, you can use numpy splitting tools.

to add to #Aenaon answer and his blockfy function, if you are working with COLOR IMAGES/ 3D ARRAY here is my pipeline to create crops of 224 x 224 for 3 channel input
def blockfy(a, p, q):
'''
Divides array a into subarrays of size p-by-q
p: block row size
q: block column size
'''
m = a.shape[0] #image row size
n = a.shape[1] #image column size
# pad array with NaNs so it can be divided by p row-wise and by q column-wise
bpr = ((m-1)//p + 1) #blocks per row
bpc = ((n-1)//q + 1) #blocks per column
M = p * bpr
N = q * bpc
A = np.nan* np.ones([M,N])
A[:a.shape[0],:a.shape[1]] = a
block_list = []
previous_row = 0
for row_block in range(bpc):
previous_row = row_block * p
previous_column = 0
for column_block in range(bpr):
previous_column = column_block * q
block = A[previous_row:previous_row+p, previous_column:previous_column+q]
# remove nan columns and nan rows
nan_cols = np.all(np.isnan(block), axis=0)
block = block[:, ~nan_cols]
nan_rows = np.all(np.isnan(block), axis=1)
block = block[~nan_rows, :]
## append
if block.size:
block_list.append(block)
return block_list
then extended above to
for file in os.listdir(path_to_crop): ### list files in your folder
img = io.imread(path_to_crop + file, as_gray=False) ### open image
r = blockfy(img[:,:,0],224,224) ### crop blocks of 224 x 224 for red channel
g = blockfy(img[:,:,1],224,224) ### crop blocks of 224 x 224 for green channel
b = blockfy(img[:,:,2],224,224) ### crop blocks of 224 x 224 for blue channel
for x in range(0,len(r)):
img = np.array((r[x],g[x],b[x])) ### combine each channel into one patch by patch
img = img.astype(np.uint8) ### cast back to proper integers
img_swap = img.swapaxes(0, 2) ### need to swap axes due to the way things were proceesed
img_swap_2 = img_swap.swapaxes(0, 1) ### do it again
Image.fromarray(img_swap_2).save(path_save_crop+str(x)+"bounding" + file,
format = 'jpeg',
subsampling=0,
quality=100) ### save patch with new name etc

How to bin a 2D array in numpy?

I'm new to numpy and I have a 2D array of objects that I need to bin into a smaller matrix and then get a count of the number of objects in each bin to make a heatmap. I followed the answer on this thread to create the bins and do the counts for a simple array but I'm not sure how to extend it to 2 dimensions. Here's what I have so far:
data_matrix = numpy.ndarray((500,500),dtype=float)
# fill array with values.
bins = numpy.linspace(0,50,50)
digitized = numpy.digitize(data_matrix, bins)
binned_data = numpy.ndarray((50,50))
for i in range(0,len(bins)):
for j in range(0,len(bins)):
k = len(data_matrix[digitized == i:digitized == j]) # <-not does not work
binned_data[i:j] = k
P.S. the [digitized == i] notation on an array will return an array of binary values. I cannot find documentation on this notation anywhere. A link would be appreciated.

You can reshape the array to a four dimensional array that reflects the desired block structure, and then sum along both axes within each block. Example:
>>> a = np.arange(24).reshape(4, 6)
>>> a
array([[ 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
[ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11],
[12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17],
[18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23]])
>>> a.reshape(2, 2, 2, 3).sum(3).sum(1)
array([[ 24, 42],
[ 96, 114]])
If a has the shape m, n, the reshape should have the form
a.reshape(m_bins, m // m_bins, n_bins, n // n_bins)

At first I was also going to suggest that you use np.histogram2d rather than reinventing the wheel, but then I realized that it would be overkill to use that and would need some hacking still.
If I understand correctly, you just want to sum over submatrices of your input. That's pretty easy to brute force: going over your output submatrix and summing up each subblock of your input:
import numpy as np
def submatsum(data,n,m):
# return a matrix of shape (n,m)
bs = data.shape[0]//n,data.shape[1]//m # blocksize averaged over
return np.reshape(np.array([np.sum(data[k1*bs[0]:(k1+1)*bs[0],k2*bs[1]:(k2+1)*bs[1]]) for k1 in range(n) for k2 in range(m)]),(n,m))
# set up dummy data
N,M = 4,6
data_matrix = np.reshape(np.arange(N*M),(N,M))
# set up size of 2x3-reduced matrix, assume congruity
n,m = N//2,M//3
reduced_matrix = submatsum(data_matrix,n,m)
# check output
print(data_matrix)
print(reduced_matrix)
This prints
print(data_matrix)
[[ 0 1 2 3 4 5]
[ 6 7 8 9 10 11]
[12 13 14 15 16 17]
[18 19 20 21 22 23]]
print(reduced_matrix)
[[ 24 42]
[ 96 114]]
which is indeed the result for summing up submatrices of shape (2,3).
Note that I'm using // for integer division to make sure it's python3-compatible, but in case of python2 you can just use / for division (due to the numbers involved being integers).

Another solution is to have a look at the binArray function on the comments here:
Binning a numpy array
To use your example :
data_matrix = numpy.ndarray((500,500),dtype=float)
binned_data = binArray(data_matrix, 0, 10, 10, np.sum)
binned_data = binArray(binned_data, 1, 10, 10, np.sum)
The result sum all square of size 10x10 in data_matrix (of size 500x500) to obtain a single value per square in binned_data (of size 50x50).
Hope this help !

Operations on 'N' dimensional numpy arrays

I am attempting to generalize some Python code to operate on arrays of arbitrary dimension. The operations are applied to each vector in the array. So for a 1D array, there is simply one operation, for a 2-D array it would be both row and column-wise (linearly, so order does not matter). For example, a 1D array (a) is simple:
b = operation(a)
where 'operation' is expecting a 1D array. For a 2D array, the operation might proceed as
for ii in range(0,a.shape[0]):
b[ii,:] = operation(a[ii,:])
for jj in range(0,b.shape[1]):
c[:,ii] = operation(b[:,ii])
I would like to make this general where I do not need to know the dimension of the array beforehand, and not have a large set of if/elif statements for each possible dimension.
Solutions that are general for 1 or 2 dimensions are ok, though a completely general solution would be preferred. In reality, I do not imagine needing this for any dimension higher than 2, but if I can see a general example I will learn something!
Extra information:
I have a matlab code that uses cells to do something similar, but I do not fully understand how it works. In this example, each vector is rearranged (basically the same function as fftshift in numpy.fft). Not sure if this helps, but it operates on an array of arbitrary dimension.
function aout=foldfft(ain)
nd = ndims(ain);
for k = 1:nd
nx = size(ain,k);
kx = floor(nx/2);
idx{k} = [kx:nx 1:kx-1];
end
aout = ain(idx{:});

In Octave, your MATLAB code does:
octave:19> size(ain)
ans =
2 3 4
octave:20> idx
idx =
{
[1,1] =
1 2
[1,2] =
1 2 3
[1,3] =
2 3 4 1
}
and then it uses the idx cell array to index ain. With these dimensions it 'rolls' the size 4 dimension.
For 5 and 6 the index lists would be:
2 3 4 5 1
3 4 5 6 1 2
The equivalent in numpy is:
In [161]: ain=np.arange(2*3*4).reshape(2,3,4)
In [162]: idx=np.ix_([0,1],[0,1,2],[1,2,3,0])
In [163]: idx
Out[163]:
(array([[[0]],
[[1]]]), array([[[0],
[1],
[2]]]), array([[[1, 2, 3, 0]]]))
In [164]: ain[idx]
Out[164]:
array([[[ 1, 2, 3, 0],
[ 5, 6, 7, 4],
[ 9, 10, 11, 8]],
[[13, 14, 15, 12],
[17, 18, 19, 16],
[21, 22, 23, 20]]])
Besides the 0 based indexing, I used np.ix_ to reshape the indexes. MATLAB and numpy use different syntax to index blocks of values.
The next step is to construct [0,1],[0,1,2],[1,2,3,0] with code, a straight forward translation.
I can use np.r_ as a short cut for turning 2 slices into an index array:
In [201]: idx=[]
In [202]: for nx in ain.shape:
kx = int(np.floor(nx/2.))
kx = kx-1;
idx.append(np.r_[kx:nx, 0:kx])
.....:
In [203]: idx
Out[203]: [array([0, 1]), array([0, 1, 2]), array([1, 2, 3, 0])]
and pass this through np.ix_ to make the appropriate index tuple:
In [204]: ain[np.ix_(*idx)]
Out[204]:
array([[[ 1, 2, 3, 0],
[ 5, 6, 7, 4],
[ 9, 10, 11, 8]],
[[13, 14, 15, 12],
[17, 18, 19, 16],
[21, 22, 23, 20]]])
In this case, where 2 dimensions don't roll anything, slice(None) could replace those:
In [210]: idx=(slice(None),slice(None),[1,2,3,0])
In [211]: ain[idx]
======================
np.roll does:
indexes = concatenate((arange(n - shift, n), arange(n - shift)))
res = a.take(indexes, axis)
np.apply_along_axis is another function that constructs an index array (and turns it into a tuple for indexing).

If you are looking for a programmatic way to index the k-th dimension an n-dimensional array, then numpy.take might help you.
An implementation of foldfft is given below as an example:
In[1]:
import numpy as np
def foldfft(ain):
result = ain
nd = len(ain.shape)
for k in range(nd):
nx = ain.shape[k]
kx = (nx+1)//2
shifted_index = list(range(kx,nx)) + list(range(kx))
result = np.take(result, shifted_index, k)
return result
a = np.indices([3,3])
print("Shape of a = ", a.shape)
print("\nStarting array:\n\n", a)
print("\nFolded array:\n\n", foldfft(a))
Out[1]:
Shape of a = (2, 3, 3)
Starting array:
[[[0 0 0]
[1 1 1]
[2 2 2]]
[[0 1 2]
[0 1 2]
[0 1 2]]]
Folded array:
[[[2 0 1]
[2 0 1]
[2 0 1]]
[[2 2 2]
[0 0 0]
[1 1 1]]]

You could use numpy.ndarray.flat, which allows you to linearly iterate over a n dimensional numpy array. Your code should then look something like this:
b = np.asarray(x)
for i in range(len(x.flat)):
b.flat[i] = operation(x.flat[i])

The folks above provided multiple appropriate solutions. For completeness, here is my final solution. In this toy example for the case of 3 dimensions, the function 'ops' replaces the first and last element of a vector with 1.
import numpy as np
def ops(s):
s[0]=1
s[-1]=1
return s
a = np.random.rand(4,4,3)
print '------'
print 'Array a'
print a
print '------'
for ii in np.arange(a.ndim):
a = np.apply_along_axis(ops,ii,a)
print '------'
print ' Axis',str(ii)
print a
print '------'
print ' '
The resulting 3D array has a 1 in every element on the 'border' with the numbers in the middle of the array unchanged. This is of course a toy example; however ops could be any arbitrary function that operates on a 1D vector.
Flattening the vector will also work; I chose not to pursue that simply because the book-keeping is more difficult and apply_along_axis is the simplest approach.
apply_along_axis reference page