Positional Encoding

Fact

A way to give each sequence item its position.

In Plain Words

Without positional encoding, a sentence is fridge magnets in a junk drawer. All the words are there, but 'dog bites man' can turn into 'man bites dog.'

It gives each word a seat number. Then models keep order in long writing and code.

Related Concepts

• Transformer architecture
• Self-Attention
• Vector Embedding

Transformer
Positional Encoding lets a Transformer know each word's place.

Self-Attention
Self-Attention can compare words, but it needs help with order.

Embedding
Positional Encoding is often added to the word Embedding.