English
Related papers

Related papers: The fundamental nature of the log loss function

200 papers

Loss functions drive the optimization of machine learning algorithms. The choice of a loss function can have a significant impact on the training of a model, and how the model learns the data. Binary classification is one of the major…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-02 Rayan Wali

Loss functions engineering and the assessment of forecasting performances are two crucial and intertwined aspects of supervised machine learning. This paper focuses on binary classification to introduce a class of loss functions that are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-30 Francesco Marchetti , Sabrina Guastavino , Michele Piana , Cristina Campi

We present $\alpha$-loss, $\alpha \in [1,\infty]$, a tunable loss function for binary classification that bridges log-loss ($\alpha=1$) and $0$-$1$ loss ($\alpha = \infty$). We prove that $\alpha$-loss has an equivalent margin-based form…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-21 Tyler Sypherd , Mario Diaz , Lalitha Sankar , Peter Kairouz

Loss functions are at the heart of deep learning, shaping how models learn and perform across diverse tasks. They are used to quantify the difference between predicted outputs and ground truth labels, guiding the optimization process to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-11 Omar Elharrouss , Yasir Mahmood , Yassine Bechqito , Mohamed Adel Serhani , Elarbi Badidi , Jamal Riffi , Hamid Tairi

We propose a generalized formulation of the Huber loss. We show that with a suitable function of choice, specifically the log-exp transform; we can achieve a loss function which combines the desirable properties of both the absolute and the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-08-31 Kaan Gokcesu , Hakan Gokcesu

Researchers building behavioral models, such as behavioral game theorists, use experimental data to evaluate predictive models of human behavior. However, there is little agreement about which loss function should be used in evaluations,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-26 Greg d'Eon , Sophie Greenwood , Kevin Leyton-Brown , James R. Wright

Neural networks are becoming central in several areas of computer vision and image processing and different architectures have been proposed to solve specific problems. The impact of the loss layer of neural networks, however, has not…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2018-04-24 Hang Zhao , Orazio Gallo , Iuri Frosio , Jan Kautz

In this paper, we prove that separable negative log-likelihood losses for structured prediction are not necessarily Bayes consistent, or, in other words, minimizing these losses may not result in a model that predicts the most probable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-27 Caio Corro

Multi-class classification is one of the most important tasks in machine learning. In this paper we consider two online multi-class classification problems: classification by a linear model and by a kernelized model. The quality of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2010-01-07 Fedor Zhdanov , Yuri Kalnishkan

Estimating the ratio of two probability densities from a finite number of observations is a central machine learning problem. A common approach is to construct estimators using binary classifiers that distinguish observations from the two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-28 Werner Zellinger

Given a model in algebraic statistics and some data, the likelihood function is a rational function on a projective variety. Algebraic algorithms are presented for computing all critical points of this function, with the aim of identifying…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2007-06-13 Serkan Hosten , Amit Khetan , Bernd Sturmfels

The loss function used to train a neural network is strongly connected to its output layer from a statistical point of view. This technical report analyzes common activation functions for a neural network output layer, like linear, sigmoid,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Fernando Berzal

In a variety of problems originating in supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning, the loss function is defined by an expectation over a collection of random variables, which might be part of a probabilistic model or the external…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-01-06 John Schulman , Nicolas Heess , Theophane Weber , Pieter Abbeel

This work proposes a new loss function targeting classification problems, utilizing a source of information overlooked by cross entropy loss. First, we derive a series of the tightest upper and lower bounds for the probability of a random…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Ali Ghobadzadeh , Amir Lashkari

In binary classification problems, mainly two approaches have been proposed; one is loss function approach and the other is uncertainty set approach. The loss function approach is applied to major learning algorithms such as support vector…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-05-01 Takafumi Kanamori , Akiko Takeda , Taiji Suzuki

Recent advances in deep learning have pushed the performances of visual saliency models way further than it has ever been. Numerous models in the literature present new ways to design neural networks, to arrange gaze pattern data, or to…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2019-07-05 Alexandre Bruckert , Hamed R. Tavakoli , Zhi Liu , Marc Christie , Olivier Le Meur

Time Series Forecasting has been an active area of research due to its many applications ranging from network usage prediction, resource allocation, anomaly detection, and predictive maintenance. Numerous publications published in the last…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-08 Aryan Jadon , Avinash Patil , Shruti Jadon

Probabilistic Logic Programming is an effective formalism for encoding problems characterized by uncertainty. Some of these problems may require the optimization of probability values subject to constraints among probability distributions…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Damiano Azzolini , Fabrizio Riguzzi

Topological loss based on persistent homology has shown promise in various applications. A topological loss enforces the model to achieve certain desired topological property. Despite its empirical success, less is known about the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Yikai Zhang , Jiachen Yao , Yusu Wang , Chao Chen

Loss tomography has received considerable attention in recent years and a number of estimators based on maximum likelihood (ML) or Bayesian principles have been proposed. Almost all of the estimators are devoted to the tree topology despite…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2015-03-19 Weiping Zhu , Ke Deng