@article {4752, title = {Distribution of Classification Margins: Are All Data Equal?}, year = {2021}, abstract = {

Recent theoretical results show that gradient descent on deep neural networks under exponential loss functions locally maximizes classification margin, which is equivalent to minimizing the norm of the weight matrices under margin\  constraints. This property of the solution however does not fully characterize the generalization performance. We motivate theoretically and show empirically that the area under the curve of the margin distribution on the training set is in fact a good measure of generalization. We then show that, after data separation is achieved, it is possible to dynamically reduce the training set by more than 99\% without significant loss of performance. Interestingly, the resulting subset of {\textquotedblleft}high capacity{\textquotedblright} features is not consistent across different training runs, which is consistent with the theoretical claim that all training points should converge to the same asymptotic margin under SGD and in the presence of both batch normalization and weight decay.

}, author = {Andrzej Banburski and Fernanda De La Torre and Nishka Pant and Ishana Shastri and Tomaso Poggio} } @article {3694, title = {Theory III: Dynamics and Generalization in Deep Networks}, year = {2018}, month = {06/2018}, abstract = {

The key to generalization is controlling the complexity of
\  \  \  \  \  \  the network. However, there is no obvious control of
\  \  \  \  \  \  complexity -- such as an explicit regularization term --
\  \  \  \  \  \  in the training of deep networks for classification. We
\  \  \  \  \  \  will show that a classical form of norm control -- but
\  \  \  \  \  \  kind of hidden -- is present in deep networks trained with
\  \  \  \  \  \  gradient descent techniques on exponential-type losses. In
\  \  \  \  \  \  particular, gradient descent induces a dynamics of the
\  \  \  \  \  \  normalized weights which converge for $t \to \infty$ to an
\  \  \  \  \  \  equilibrium which corresponds to a minimum norm (or
\  \  \  \  \  \  maximum margin) solution. For sufficiently large but
\  \  \  \  \  \  finite $\rho$ -- and thus finite $t$ -- the dynamics
\  \  \  \  \  \  converges to one of several margin maximizers, with the
\  \  \  \  \  \  margin monotonically increasing towards a limit stationary
\  \  \  \  \  \  point of the flow. In the usual case of stochastic
\  \  \  \  \  \  gradient descent, most of the stationary points are likely
\  \  \  \  \  \  to be convex minima corresponding to a regularized,
\  \  \  \  \  \  constrained minimizer -- the network with normalized
\  \  \  \  \  \  weights-- which is stable and has asymptotic zero
\  \  \  \  \  \  generalization gap, asymptotically for $N \to \infty$,
\  \  \  \  \  \  where $N$ is the number of training examples. For finite,
\  \  \  \  \  \  fixed $N$ the generalizaton gap may not be zero but the
\  \  \  \  \  \  minimum norm property of the solution can provide, we
\  \  \  \  \  \  conjecture, good expected performance for suitable data
\  \  \  \  \  \  distributions. Our approach extends some of the results of
\  \  \  \  \  \  Srebro from linear networks to deep networks and provides
\  \  \  \  \  \  a new perspective on the implicit bias of gradient
\  \  \  \  \  \  descent. We believe that the elusive complexity control we
\  \  \  \  \  \  describe is responsible for the puzzling empirical finding
\  \  \  \  \  \  of good predictive performance by deep networks, despite
\  \  \  \  \  \  overparametrization.\ 

}, author = {Andrzej Banburski and Qianli Liao and Brando Miranda and Tomaso Poggio and Lorenzo Rosasco and Jack Hidary and Fernanda De La Torre} }