Compute the outer product of two vectors.
Given two vectors, ``a = a0, a1, ..., aM`` and ``b = b0, b1, ..., bN``, the outer product 1_ is::
[a0*b0 a0*b1 ... a0*bN ] [a1*b0 . [ ... . [aM*b0 aM*bN ]] Parameters ---------- a : (M,) array_like First input vector. Input is flattened if not already 1-dimensional. b : (N,) array_like Second input vector. Input is flattened if not already 1-dimensional. out : (M, N) ndarray, optional A location where the result is stored .. versionadded:: 1.9.0 Returns ------- out : (M, N) ndarray ``out[i, j] = a[i] * b[j]`` See also -------- inner einsum : ``einsum('i,j->ij', a.ravel(), b.ravel())`` is the equivalent. ufunc.outer : A generalization to N dimensions and other operations. ``np.multiply.outer(a.ravel(), b.ravel())`` is the equivalent. References ---------- .. [1] : G. H. Golub and C. F. Van Loan, *Matrix Computations*, 3rd ed., Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pg. 8. Examples -------- Make a ( *very* coarse) grid for computing a Mandelbrot set: >>> rl = np.outer(np.ones((5,)), np.linspace(-2, 2, 5)) >>> rl array([[-2., -1., 0., 1., 2.], [-2., -1., 0., 1., 2.], [-2., -1., 0., 1., 2.], [-2., -1., 0., 1., 2.], [-2., -1., 0., 1., 2.]]) >>> im = np.outer(1j*np.linspace(2, -2, 5), np.ones((5,))) >>> im array([[0.+2.j, 0.+2.j, 0.+2.j, 0.+2.j, 0.+2.j], [0.+1.j, 0.+1.j, 0.+1.j, 0.+1.j, 0.+1.j], [0.+0.j, 0.+0.j, 0.+0.j, 0.+0.j, 0.+0.j], [0.-1.j, 0.-1.j, 0.-1.j, 0.-1.j, 0.-1.j], [0.-2.j, 0.-2.j, 0.-2.j, 0.-2.j, 0.-2.j]]) >>> grid = rl + im >>> grid array([[-2.+2.j, -1.+2.j, 0.+2.j, 1.+2.j, 2.+2.j], [-2.+1.j, -1.+1.j, 0.+1.j, 1.+1.j, 2.+1.j], [-2.+0.j, -1.+0.j, 0.+0.j, 1.+0.j, 2.+0.j], [-2.-1.j, -1.-1.j, 0.-1.j, 1.-1.j, 2.-1.j], [-2.-2.j, -1.-2.j, 0.-2.j, 1.-2.j, 2.-2.j]]) An example using a 'vector' of letters: >>> x = np.array(['a', 'b', 'c'], dtype=object) >>> np.outer(x, [1, 2, 3]) array([['a', 'aa', 'aaa'], ['b', 'bb', 'bbb'], ['c', 'cc', 'ccc']], dtype=object)