What does NetMapOperator do?

Recently, I have become addicted to Mathematica's support for neural networks. As I learn those commands that are prefixed with "Net", I can't tell the difference between using NetMapOperator, and not using it. For example,

From the help information, I just think that this command only serves to normalize the input and output formats. Can anyone point out its substantive functions?

• Please make sure to include your code as text, rather than as images. – MarcoB Jun 28 '18 at 16:26
• I will pay attention next time. @MarcoB – PokerN Jun 29 '18 at 17:25

NetChain[
{
LinearLayer[3]
},
"Input" -> 2
]


NetChain[
{
NetMapOperator[LinearLayer[3]]
},
"Input" -> 2
]


In the first network LinearLinear is applying to the whole input sequence and output has size 3.

In the second network LinearLinear is applying to the every element of sequence and output has size 2*3. This is the same as TimeDistributed in Keras.

In your examples try1 was evaluated on the batch of data (batch = 4, size of the data point = 2) and try2 was evaluated on the single data point with dimension {4,2}.

• Thank you for your explanation. I think I understand. try1 is just like a function with Listable attribute. try2 is just like a function map on a list. So, the results is the same! – PokerN Jun 29 '18 at 17:22