Matlab SVM custom kernel function - matlab

Question

In the Matlab SVM tutorial, it says
You can set your own kernel function, for example, kernel, by setting 'KernelFunction','kernel'. kernel must have the following form:
function G = kernel(U,V)
where:
U is an m-by-p matrix.
V is an n-by-p matrix.
G is an m-by-n Gram matrix of the rows of U and V.
When I followed the custom SVM kernel example, I set a break point in mysigmoid.m function. However, I found U and V were in fact 1-by-p vectors and G was a scalar.
Why does not MATLAB process the kernel by matrices?
My custom kernel function is
function G = mysigmoid(U,V)
% Sigmoid kernel function with slope gamma and intercept c
gamma = 0.5;
c = -1;
G = tanh(gamma*U*V' + c);
end
My Matlab script is
%% Train SVM Classifiers Using a Custom Kernel
rng(1); % For reproducibility
n = 100; % Number of points per quadrant
r1 = sqrt(rand(2*n,1)); % Random radius
t1 = [pi/2*rand(n,1); (pi/2*rand(n,1)+pi)]; % Random angles for Q1 and Q3
X1 = [r1.*cos(t1), r1.*sin(t1)]; % Polar-to-Cartesian conversion
r2 = sqrt(rand(2*n,1));
t2 = [pi/2*rand(n,1)+pi/2; (pi/2*rand(n,1)-pi/2)]; % Random angles for Q2 and Q4
X2 = [r2.*cos(t2), r2.*sin(t2)];
X = [X1; X2]; % Predictors
Y = ones(4*n,1);
Y(2*n + 1:end) = -1; % Labels
% Plot the data
figure(1);
gscatter(X(:,1),X(:,2),Y);
title('Scatter Diagram of Simulated Data');
SVMModel1 = fitcsvm(X,Y,'KernelFunction','mysigmoid','Standardize',true);
% Compute the scores over a grid
d = 0.02; % Step size of the grid
[x1Grid,x2Grid] = meshgrid(min(X(:,1)):d:max(X(:,1)),...
min(X(:,2)):d:max(X(:,2)));
xGrid = [x1Grid(:),x2Grid(:)]; % The grid
[~,scores1] = predict(SVMModel1,xGrid); % The scores
figure(2);
h(1:2) = gscatter(X(:,1),X(:,2),Y);
hold on;
h(3) = plot(X(SVMModel1.IsSupportVector,1),X(SVMModel1.IsSupportVector,2),...
'ko','MarkerSize',10);
% Support vectors
contour(x1Grid,x2Grid,reshape(scores1(:,2),size(x1Grid)),[0,0],'k');
% Decision boundary
title('Scatter Diagram with the Decision Boundary');
legend({'-1','1','Support Vectors'},'Location','Best');
hold off;
CVSVMModel1 = crossval(SVMModel1);
misclass1 = kfoldLoss(CVSVMModel1);
disp(misclass1);

Answer 1

Kernels add dimensions to a feature. If you have, for example, one feature for sample x={a} it will expand it into something like x= {a_1... a_q}. As you are doing this for all of your data at once, you are going to have a M x P (M is the number of examples in your training set and P is the number of features). The second matrix it asks for is P x N, where N is the number of examples in the training/test set.
That said, your output should be M x N. Since it is instead 1, it means that you have U = 1XM and V=Nx1 where N=M. To have an output of M x N logic follows that you should simply transpose your inputs.