TensorFlow 2 quickstart for beginners

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This short introduction uses Keras to:

  1. Load a prebuilt dataset.
  2. Build a neural network machine learning model that classifies images.
  3. Train this neural network.
  4. Evaluate the accuracy of the model.

This tutorial is a Google Colaboratory notebook. Python programs are run directly in the browser—a great way to learn and use TensorFlow. To follow this tutorial, run the notebook in Google Colab by clicking the button at the top of this page.

  1. In Colab, connect to a Python runtime: At the top-right of the menu bar, select CONNECT.
  2. To run all the code in the notebook, select Runtime > Run all. To run the code cells one at a time, hover over each cell and select the Run cell icon.

Run cell icon

Set up TensorFlow

Import TensorFlow into your program to get started:

import tensorflow as tf
print("TensorFlow version:", tf.__version__)
2024-08-16 07:45:15.387747: E external/local_xla/xla/stream_executor/cuda/cuda_fft.cc:485] Unable to register cuFFT factory: Attempting to register factory for plugin cuFFT when one has already been registered
2024-08-16 07:45:15.408731: E external/local_xla/xla/stream_executor/cuda/cuda_dnn.cc:8454] Unable to register cuDNN factory: Attempting to register factory for plugin cuDNN when one has already been registered
2024-08-16 07:45:15.415209: E external/local_xla/xla/stream_executor/cuda/cuda_blas.cc:1452] Unable to register cuBLAS factory: Attempting to register factory for plugin cuBLAS when one has already been registered
TensorFlow version: 2.17.0

If you are following along in your own development environment, rather than Colab, see the install guide for setting up TensorFlow for development.

Load a dataset

Load and prepare the MNIST dataset. The pixel values of the images range from 0 through 255. Scale these values to a range of 0 to 1 by dividing the values by 255.0. This also converts the sample data from integers to floating-point numbers:

mnist = tf.keras.datasets.mnist

(x_train, y_train), (x_test, y_test) = mnist.load_data()
x_train, x_test = x_train / 255.0, x_test / 255.0

Build a machine learning model

Build a tf.keras.Sequential model:

model = tf.keras.models.Sequential([
  tf.keras.layers.Flatten(input_shape=(28, 28)),
  tf.keras.layers.Dense(128, activation='relu'),
  tf.keras.layers.Dropout(0.2),
  tf.keras.layers.Dense(10)
])
/tmpfs/src/tf_docs_env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/keras/src/layers/reshaping/flatten.py:37: UserWarning: Do not pass an `input_shape`/`input_dim` argument to a layer. When using Sequential models, prefer using an `Input(shape)` object as the first layer in the model instead.
  super().__init__(**kwargs)
WARNING: All log messages before absl::InitializeLog() is called are written to STDERR
I0000 00:00:1723794318.490455  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.494342  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.497584  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.501312  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.512702  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.516197  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.519187  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.522647  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.526047  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.529503  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.532428  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794318.535893  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.771712  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.773840  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.775826  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.777872  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.779874  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.781821  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.783693  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.785644  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.787540  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.789499  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.791369  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.793317  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.831749  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.833814  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.835738  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.837736  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.839701  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.841655  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.843526  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.845500  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.847443  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.849923  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.852250  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355
I0000 00:00:1723794319.854736  241277 cuda_executor.cc:1015] successful NUMA node read from SysFS had negative value (-1), but there must be at least one NUMA node, so returning NUMA node zero. See more at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.0/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci#L344-L355

Sequential is useful for stacking layers where each layer has one input tensor and one output tensor. Layers are functions with a known mathematical structure that can be reused and have trainable variables. Most TensorFlow models are composed of layers. This model uses the Flatten, Dense, and Dropout layers.

For each example, the model returns a vector of logits or log-odds scores, one for each class.

predictions = model(x_train[:1]).numpy()
predictions
array([[ 0.68130803, -0.03935227, -0.53304887,  0.22200397, -0.3079031 ,
        -0.6267688 ,  0.43393654,  0.5691322 ,  0.31098977,  0.32141146]],
      dtype=float32)

The tf.nn.softmax function converts these logits to probabilities for each class:

tf.nn.softmax(predictions).numpy()
array([[0.16339162, 0.07947874, 0.04851112, 0.10321827, 0.06076043,
        0.0441712 , 0.12758444, 0.14605366, 0.11282429, 0.11400625]],
      dtype=float32)

Define a loss function for training using losses.SparseCategoricalCrossentropy:

loss_fn = tf.keras.losses.SparseCategoricalCrossentropy(from_logits=True)

The loss function takes a vector of ground truth values and a vector of logits and returns a scalar loss for each example. This loss is equal to the negative log probability of the true class: The loss is zero if the model is sure of the correct class.

This untrained model gives probabilities close to random (1/10 for each class), so the initial loss should be close to -tf.math.log(1/10) ~= 2.3.

loss_fn(y_train[:1], predictions).numpy()
3.1196823

Before you start training, configure and compile the model using Keras Model.compile. Set the optimizer class to adam, set the loss to the loss_fn function you defined earlier, and specify a metric to be evaluated for the model by setting the metrics parameter to accuracy.

model.compile(optimizer='adam',
              loss=loss_fn,
              metrics=['accuracy'])

Train and evaluate your model

Use the Model.fit method to adjust your model parameters and minimize the loss:

model.fit(x_train, y_train, epochs=5)
Epoch 1/5
WARNING: All log messages before absl::InitializeLog() is called are written to STDERR
I0000 00:00:1723794322.305243  241442 service.cc:146] XLA service 0x7effb8008d30 initialized for platform CUDA (this does not guarantee that XLA will be used). Devices:
I0000 00:00:1723794322.305276  241442 service.cc:154]   StreamExecutor device (0): Tesla T4, Compute Capability 7.5
I0000 00:00:1723794322.305281  241442 service.cc:154]   StreamExecutor device (1): Tesla T4, Compute Capability 7.5
I0000 00:00:1723794322.305284  241442 service.cc:154]   StreamExecutor device (2): Tesla T4, Compute Capability 7.5
I0000 00:00:1723794322.305287  241442 service.cc:154]   StreamExecutor device (3): Tesla T4, Compute Capability 7.5
112/1875 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2s 1ms/step - accuracy: 0.6089 - loss: 1.3300
I0000 00:00:1723794323.392324  241442 device_compiler.h:188] Compiled cluster using XLA!  This line is logged at most once for the lifetime of the process.
1875/1875 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 4s 1ms/step - accuracy: 0.8622 - loss: 0.4811
Epoch 2/5
1875/1875 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2s 1ms/step - accuracy: 0.9547 - loss: 0.1539
Epoch 3/5
1875/1875 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2s 1ms/step - accuracy: 0.9676 - loss: 0.1107
Epoch 4/5
1875/1875 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2s 1ms/step - accuracy: 0.9738 - loss: 0.0843
Epoch 5/5
1875/1875 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2s 1ms/step - accuracy: 0.9764 - loss: 0.0769
<keras.src.callbacks.history.History at 0x7f0184ec7490>

The Model.evaluate method checks the model's performance, usually on a validation set or test set.

model.evaluate(x_test,  y_test, verbose=2)
313/313 - 1s - 3ms/step - accuracy: 0.9782 - loss: 0.0729
[0.07293704897165298, 0.9782000184059143]

The image classifier is now trained to ~98% accuracy on this dataset. To learn more, read the TensorFlow tutorials.

If you want your model to return a probability, you can wrap the trained model, and attach the softmax to it:

probability_model = tf.keras.Sequential([
  model,
  tf.keras.layers.Softmax()
])
probability_model(x_test[:5])
<tf.Tensor: shape=(5, 10), dtype=float32, numpy=
array([[1.5427084e-07, 7.5027339e-11, 3.1343968e-06, 4.6326011e-05,
        8.9990645e-13, 1.5266414e-07, 2.0456495e-13, 9.9994934e-01,
        2.1858141e-07, 7.8530559e-07],
       [1.7771253e-08, 8.4947787e-05, 9.9989736e-01, 1.8331458e-06,
        8.3026415e-15, 3.4793761e-08, 6.2480517e-08, 7.9319728e-12,
        1.5733674e-05, 3.5440111e-15],
       [3.3602277e-07, 9.9804592e-01, 5.7737787e-05, 5.8099768e-06,
        6.3599517e-05, 2.3768812e-06, 2.3459031e-06, 1.6781164e-03,
        1.4260423e-04, 1.0617223e-06],
       [9.9997318e-01, 8.7561805e-11, 9.8983969e-07, 9.0878149e-10,
        1.0803159e-07, 3.3033965e-07, 2.3622524e-05, 6.7567669e-07,
        4.7765565e-09, 1.1131582e-06],
       [1.1404303e-05, 2.4895797e-09, 6.0792736e-06, 4.9114313e-08,
        9.9449867e-01, 5.9158310e-06, 2.9842497e-05, 4.8574508e-05,
        8.5193824e-06, 5.3910208e-03]], dtype=float32)>

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have trained a machine learning model using a prebuilt dataset using the Keras API.

For more examples of using Keras, check out the tutorials. To learn more about building models with Keras, read the guides. If you want learn more about loading and preparing data, see the tutorials on image data loading or CSV data loading.