Generalization error | EPFL Graph Search

For supervised learning applications in machine learning and statistical learning theory, generalization error (also known as the out-of-sample error or the risk) is a measure of how accurately an algorithm is able to predict outcome values for previously unseen data. Because learning algorithms are evaluated on finite samples, the evaluation of a learning algorithm may be sensitive to sampling error. As a result, measurements of prediction error on the current data may not provide much information about predictive ability on new data. Generalization error can be minimized by avoiding overfitting in the learning algorithm. The performance of a machine learning algorithm is visualized by plots that show values of estimates of the generalization error through the learning process, which are called learning curves. Definition Statistical learning theory In a learning problem, the goal is to develop a function f_n(\vec{x}) that predicts output values y

On Vacuous and Non-Vacuous Generalization Bounds for Deep Neural Networks.

Konstantinos Pitas

Deep neural networks have been empirically successful in a variety of tasks, however their theoretical understanding is still poor. In particular, modern deep neural networks have many more parameters than training data. Thus, in principle they should overfit the training samples and exhibit poor generalization to the complete data distribution. Counter intuitively however, they manage to achieve both high training accuracy and high testing accuracy. One can prove generalization using a validation set, however this can be difficult when training samples are limited and at the same time we do not obtain any information about why deep neural networks generalize well. Another approach is to estimate the complexity of the deep neural network. The hypothesis is that if a network with high training accuracy has high complexity it will have memorized the data, while if it has low complexity it will have learned generalizable patterns. In the first part of this thesis we explore Spectral Complexity, a measure of complexity that depends on combinations of norms of the weight matrices of the deep neural network. For a dataset that is difficult to classify, with no underlying model and/or no recurring pattern, for example one where the labels have been chosen randomly, spectral complexity has a large value, reflecting that the network needs to memorize the labels, and will not generalize well. Putting back the real labels, the spectral complexity becomes lower reflecting that some structure is present and the network has learned patterns that might generalize to unseen data. Spectral complexity results in vacuous estimates of the generalization error (the difference between the training and testing accuracy), and we show that it can lead to counterintuitive results when comparing the generalization error of different architectures. In the second part of the thesis we explore non-vacuous estimates of the generalization error. In Chapter 2 we analyze the case of PAC-Bayes where a posterior distribution over the weights of a deep neural network is learned using stochastic variational inference, and the generalization error is the KL divergence between this posterior and a prior distribution. We find that a common approximation where the posterior is constrained to be Gaussian with diagonal covariance, known as the mean-field approximation, limits significantly any gains in bound tightness. We find that, if we choose the prior mean to be the random network initialization, the generalization error estimate tightens significantly. In Chapter 3 we explore an existing approach to learning the prior mean, in PAC-Bayes, from the training set. Specifically, we explore differential privacy, which ensures that the training samples contribute only a limited amount of information to the prior, making it distribution and not training set dependent. In this way the prior should generalize well to unseen data (as it hasn't memorized individual samples) and at the same time any posterior distribution that is close to it in terms of the KL divergence will also exhibit good generalization.

EPFL2020

Theory of Deep Learning: Neural Tangent Kernel and Beyond

Arthur Ulysse Jacot-Guillarmod

In the recent years, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have managed to succeed at tasks that previously appeared impossible, such as human-level object recognition, text synthesis, translation, playing games and many more. In spite of these major achievements, our understanding of these models, in particular of what happens during their training, remains very limited. This PhD started with the introduction of the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) to describe the evolution of the function represented by the network during training. In the infinite-width limit, i.e. when the number of neurons in the layers of the network grows to infinity, the NTK converges to a deterministic and time-independent limit, leading to a simple yet complete description of the dynamics of infinitely-wide DNNs. This allowed one to give the first general proof of convergence of DNNs to a global minimum, and yielded the first description of the limiting spectrum of the Hessian of the loss surface of DNNs throughout training.More importantly, the NTK plays a crucial role in describing the generalization abilities of DNNs, i.e. the performance of the trained network on unseen data. The NTK analysis uncovered a direct link between the function learned by infinitely wide DNNs and Kernel Ridge Regression predictors, whose generalization properties are studied in this thesis using tools of random matrix theory. Our analysis of KRR reveals the importance of the eigendecomposition of the NTK, which is affected by a number of architectural choices. In very deep networks, an ordered regime and a chaotic regime appear, determined by the choice of non-linearity and the balance between the weights and bias parameters; these two phases are characterized by different speeds of decay of the eigenvalues of the NTK, leading to a tradeoff between convergence speed and generalization. In practical contexts such as Generative Adversarial Networks or Topology Optimization, the network architecture can be chosen to guarantee certain properties of the NTK and its spectrum.These results give an almost complete description DNNs in this infinite-width limit. It is then natural to wonder how it extends to finite-width networks used in practice. In the so-called NTK regime, the discrepancy between finite- and infinite-widths DNNs is mainly a result of the variance w.r.t. to the sampling of the parameters, as shown empirically and mathematically relying on the similarity between DNNs and random feature models.In contrast to the NTK regime, where the NTK remains constant during training, there exist so-called active regimes, where the evolution of the NTK is significant, which appear in a number of settings. One such regime appears in Deep Linear Networks with a very small initialization, where the training dynamics approach a sequence of saddle-points, representing linear maps of increasing rank, leading to a low-rank bias which is absent in the NTK regime.

EPFL2022

PACOH: Bayes-Optimal Meta-Learning with PAC-Guarantees

Martin Josifoski, Andreas Krause

Meta-learning can successfully acquire useful inductive biases from data. Yet, its generalization properties to unseen learning tasks are poorly understood. Particularly if the number of meta-training tasks is small, this raises concerns about overfitting. We provide a theoretical analysis using the PAC-Bayesian framework and derive novel generalization bounds for meta-learning. Using these bounds, we develop a class of PAC-optimal meta-learning algorithms with performance guarantees and a principled meta-level regularization. Unlike previous PAC-Bayesian meta-learners, our method results in a standard stochastic optimization problem which can be solved efficiently and scales well. When instantiating our PAC-optimal hyper-posterior (PACOH) with Gaussian processes and Bayesian Neural Networks as base learners, the resulting methods yield state-of-the-art performance, both in terms of predictive accuracy and the quality of uncertainty estimates. Thanks to their principled treatment of uncertainty, our meta-learners can also be successfully employed for sequential decision problems.

JMLR-JOURNAL MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH2021