Subscript indices must be real positive integers or logicals - octave

Question

function [theta, J_history] = gradientDescent(X, y, theta, alpha, num_iters)
%GRADIENTDESCENT Performs gradient descent to learn theta
% theta = GRADIENTDESENT(X, y, theta, alpha, num_iters) updates theta by
% taking num_iters gradient steps with learning rate alpha
% Initialize some useful values
m = length(y); % number of training examples
J_history = zeros(num_iters, 1);
for iter = 1:num_iters
% ====================== YOUR CODE HERE ======================
% Instructions: Perform a single gradient step on the parameter vector
% theta.
%
% Hint: While debugging, it can be useful to print out the values
% of the cost function (computeCost) and gradient here.
%
hypothesis = x*theta;
theta_0 = theta(1) - alpha(1/m)*sum((hypothesis-y)*x);
theta_1 = theta(2) - alpha(1/m)*sum((hypothesis-y)*x);
theta(1) = theta_0;
theta(2) = theta_1;
% ============================================================
% Save the cost J in every iteration
J_history(iter) = computeCost(X, y, theta);
end
end
I keep getting this error
error: gradientDescent: subscript indices must be either positive integers less than 2^31 or logicals
on this line right in-between the first theta and =
theta_0 = theta(1) - alpha(1/m)*sum((hypothesis-y)*x);
I'm very new to octave so please go easy on me, and
thank you in advance.
This is from the coursera course on Machine Learning from Week 2

Answer 1

99% sure your error is on the line pointed out by topsig, where you have alpha(1/m)
it would help if you gave an example of input values to your function and what you hoped to see as an output, but I'm assuming from your comment
% taking num_iters gradient steps with learning rate alpha
that alpha is a constant, not a function. as such, you have the line alpha(1/m) without any operator in between. octave sees this as you indexing alpha with the value of 1/m.
i.e., if you had an array
x = [3 4 5]
x*(2) = [6 8 10] %% two times each element in the array
x(2) = [4] %% second element in the array
what you did doesn't seem to make sense, as 'm = length(y)' which will output a scalar, so
x = [3 4 5]; m = 3;
x*(1/m) = x*(1/3) = [1 1.3333 1.6666] %% element / 3
x(1/m) = ___error___ %% the 1/3 element in the array makes no sense
note that for certain errors it always indicates that the location of the error is at the assignment operator (the equal sign at the start of the line). if it points there, you usually have to look elsewhere in the line for the actual error. here, it was yelling at you for trying to apply a non-integer subscript (1/m)