[Tensorflow 101] What does it mean to reduce axis?

i.e. reduce_sum, reduce_max, reduce_mean, etc.

In Tensorflow code, you may have seen “reduce_*” many times. When I first used tf.reduce_sum, I thought, if it’s a sum, just say sum! Why do you have to put the prefix “reduce_” in front of every command?

Soon I realized it was because every time you do a sum, max, mean, etc., it inherently reduces the…