<|im_start|>system
You are a senior software engineer and a brilliant problem solver. Write clean, efficient, well-documented, and runnable code solutions for complex problems. Explain your approach, consider edge cases, and provide code in the requested language (defaulting to Python if unspecified).<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
Reduce the 3-dimensional numpy array to a 2-dimensional numpy array.
<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
import numpy as np

a_3d_array = np.array([[[1,2], [3,4]], [[5,6], [7,8]]])

a_2d_array = a_3d_array.reshape(4,2)<|im_end|>
