rTensor: An R package for multidimensional array (tensor) unfolding, multiplication, and decomposition

Abstract

rTensor is an R package designed to provide a common set of operations and decompositions for multidimensional arrays (tensors). We provide an S4 class that wraps around the base ‘array’ class and overloads familiar operations to users of ‘array’, and we provide additional functionality for tensor operations that are becoming more relevant in recent literature. We also provide a general unfolding operation, for which the k-mode unfolding and the matrix vectorization are special cases of. Finally, package rTensor implements common tensor decompositions such as canonical polyadic decomposition, Tucker decomposition, multilinear principal component analysis, t-singular value decomposition, as well as related matrix-based algorithms such as generalized low rank approximation of matrices and popular value decomposition.