Explaining Tokenization For a Fresher

What is Tokenization?

Tokenization is the process of breaking text into smaller pieces (tokens) that a computer can understand and work with.

Think of it like taking a sentence and cutting it into Lego blocks so you can store, count, or process them.

Why do we need it?

Computers don't directly "understand" words; they understand numbers.
Tokenization provides a way to convert text to numbers and back.

for example :

"cat" → [3, 1, 20] [3, 1, 20] → "cat"

(These numbers are just example token IDs.)

Why is it important in AI/ML?

• Models learn patterns in tokens, not raw text.

• Tokenization controls vocabulary size (how many unique symbols you need to store).

• Better tokenization = faster models, smaller memory usage, better generalization.