I don't have an answer for point 1, but some hints for point 2 and 3. In your context, you're not modelling a physical 2D space but a conceptual space with tiles that have 6 neighbors. This can be modelled with square tiles arranged in columns with the odd colums shifted vertically by half the size of a square. I'll try an ASCII diagram:
___ ___ ___
| |___| |___| |___
|___| |___| |___| |
| |___| |___| |___|
|___| |___| |___| |
| |___| |___| |___|
|___| |___| |___| |
|___| |___| |___|
You can see easily that each square has 6 neighbors (except the ones on the edges of course). This gets easily modeled as a 2D array of squares, and the rules to compute the coordinates of the square at at position (i, j), i being the row and j the column are quite simple:
if j is even:
(i+1, j), (i-1, j), (i, j-1), (i, j+1), (i-1, j-1), (i+1, j-1)
if j is odd:
(i+1, j), (i-1, j), (i, j-1), (i, j+1), (i+1, j-1), (i+1, j+1)
(the 4 first terms are identical)
I know this discussion is 4 years old, however I haven't find a satisfactory answer over the web.
If you have something as a array mapping the input to the neuron and a 2-d array related to the location for each neuron.
For example consider something like this:
hits = array([1, 24, 14, 16, 6, 11, 8, 23, 15, 16, 15, 9, 20, 1, 3, 29, 4,
32, 22, 7, 26, 26, 35, 23, 7, 6, 11, 9, 18, 17, 22, 19, 34, 1,
36, 3, 31, 10, 22, 11, 21, 18, 29, 3, 6, 32, 15, 30, 27],
dtype=int32)
centers = array([[ 1.5 , 0.8660254 ],
[ 2.5 , 0.8660254 ],
[ 3.5 , 0.8660254 ],
[ 4.5 , 0.8660254 ],
[ 5.5 , 0.8660254 ],
[ 6.5 , 0.8660254 ],
[ 1. , 1.73205081],
[ 2. , 1.73205081],
[ 3. , 1.73205081],
[ 4. , 1.73205081],
[ 5. , 1.73205081],
[ 6. , 1.73205081],
[ 1.5 , 2.59807621],
[ 2.5 , 2.59807621],
[ 3.5 , 2.59807621],
[ 4.5 , 2.59807621],
[ 5.5 , 2.59807621],
[ 6.5 , 2.59807621],
[ 1. , 3.46410162],
[ 2. , 3.46410162],
[ 3. , 3.46410162],
[ 4. , 3.46410162],
[ 5. , 3.46410162],
[ 6. , 3.46410162],
[ 1.5 , 4.33012702],
[ 2.5 , 4.33012702],
[ 3.5 , 4.33012702],
[ 4.5 , 4.33012702],
[ 5.5 , 4.33012702],
[ 6.5 , 4.33012702],
[ 1. , 5.19615242],
[ 2. , 5.19615242],
[ 3. , 5.19615242],
[ 4. , 5.19615242],
[ 5. , 5.19615242],
[ 6. , 5.19615242]])
So I'do this using a the following method:
from matplotlib import collections, transforms
from matplotlib.colors import colorConverter
from matplotlib import cm
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
def plot_map(hits, n_centers, w=10):
"""
Plot Map
"""
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(w, .7 * w))
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
hits_count = np.histogram(hits, bins=n_centers.shape[0])[0]
# Discover difference between centers
collection = RegularPolyCollection(
numsides=6, # a hexagon
rotation=0, sizes=( (6.6*w)**2 ,),
edgecolors = (0, 0, 0, 1),
array= hits_count,
cmap = cm.winter,
offsets = n_centers,
transOffset = ax.transData,
)
ax.axis('off')
ax.add_collection(collection, autolim=True)
ax.autoscale_view()
fig.colorbar(collection)
return ax
_ = plot_map(som_classif, matrix)
Finally I got this output:
EDIT
An updated version of this code on https://stackoverflow.com/a/23811383/575734