embedding

Pluralembeddings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act or process of setting one thing firmly inside another so that it stays in place.

   The embedding of fossils in rock can take thousands of years.

   Surgeons explained the embedding of the small device beneath the skin.

   Similarinsertion, implantation

2. 2
   nouncountable

   In machine learning, a vector of numbers representing a word, token, or other unit of text, built so that it captures the contexts the unit appears in.

   The search engine compares the embedding of your query with stored document vectors.

   Word embeddings let the system group synonyms near one another.

   Note

   Machine learning's sense turns a word into a list of numbers. The numbers are placed so that words used in similar contexts land near one another. The noun usually carries a modifier, as in word embeddings or context embeddings, and often appears in the plural. Arvind Narayanan of Princeton called word embeddings "spectacularly successful" in 2017 at helping computers make sense of language.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of embed.

   The developer is embedding tracking code into every page.

   Engineers are embedding sensors throughout the new bridge.

   Note

   The verb form takes a direct object where the noun of the process needs of: you speak of embedding sensors in a bridge, but of the embedding of sensors. The base verb began with laying something as in a bed. Mathematicians also use it for mapping one set into another while preserving its properties, and the technical nouns grow from that use.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   In mathematics, a map that represents the containment of one structure inside another, in any of several technical senses.

   Every group admits an embedding into a group of permutations, so it can be studied as a set of rearrangements.

   Whether that map counts as an embedding depends on which structure the author requires it to respect.

   Note

   This umbrella use is what mathematicians reach for when the kind of structure is left open or is plain from context. Whether the objects are groups, spaces or fields, the shared idea is a one-to-one map that respects the structure, so its image is a faithful copy inside the target. When precision matters, writers name the kind: a smooth embedding between manifolds, or a field embedding, which is injective automatically.

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