Related papers: On the Generalization Benefit of Noise in Stochast…
Recent studies have demonstrated that noise in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is closely related to generalization: A larger SGD noise, if not too large, results in better generalization. Since the covariance of the SGD noise is…
We consider two questions at the heart of machine learning; how can we predict if a minimum will generalize to the test set, and why does stochastic gradient descent find minima that generalize well? Our work responds to Zhang et al.…
We investigate how the final parameters found by stochastic gradient descent are influenced by over-parameterization. We generate families of models by increasing the number of channels in a base network, and then perform a large…
The choice of batch-size in a stochastic optimization algorithm plays a substantial role for both optimization and generalization. Increasing the batch-size used typically improves optimization but degrades generalization. To address the…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method and its variants are algorithms of choice for many Deep Learning tasks. These methods operate in a small-batch regime wherein a fraction of the training data, say $32$-$512$ data points, is…
Distributed implementations of mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) suffer from communication overheads, attributed to the high frequency of gradient updates inherent in small-batch training. Training with large batches can reduce…
When training neural networks, it has been widely observed that a large step size is essential in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for obtaining superior models. However, the effect of large step sizes on the success of SGD is not well…
Mini-batch stochastic gradient methods (SGD) are state of the art for distributed training of deep neural networks. Drastic increases in the mini-batch sizes have lead to key efficiency and scalability gains in recent years. However,…
The performance of mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) strongly depends on setting the batch size and learning rate to minimize the empirical loss in training the deep neural network. In this paper, we present theoretical analyses…
What enables Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) to achieve better generalization than Gradient Descent (GD) in Neural Network training? This question has attracted much attention. In this paper, we study the distribution of the Stochastic…
Stochastic gradient descent~(SGD) and its variants have been the dominating optimization methods in machine learning. Compared to SGD with small-batch training, SGD with large-batch training can better utilize the computational power of…
We study how the batch size affects the total gradient variance in differentially private stochastic gradient descent (DP-SGD), seeking a theoretical explanation for the usefulness of large batch sizes. As DP-SGD is the basis of modern DP…
Machine learning models trained with \emph{stochastic} gradient descent (SGD) can generalize better than those trained with deterministic gradient descent (GD). In this work, we study SGD's impact on generalization through the lens of the…
Understanding the implicit bias of training algorithms is of crucial importance in order to explain the success of overparametrised neural networks. In this paper, we study the dynamics of stochastic gradient descent over diagonal linear…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with mini-batching is a standard tool in large-scale optimization, yet its theoretical properties under heavy-tailed gradient noise remain largely unexplored. In this paper we study SGD with increasing…
Large-batch SGD is important for scaling training of deep neural networks. However, without fine-tuning hyperparameter schedules, the generalization of the model may be hampered. We propose to use batch augmentation: replicating instances…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is almost ubiquitously used for training non-convex optimization tasks. Recently, a hypothesis proposed by Keskar et al. [2017] that large batch methods tend to converge to sharp minimizers has received…
Increasing the mini-batch size for stochastic gradient descent offers significant opportunities to reduce wall-clock training time, but there are a variety of theoretical and systems challenges that impede the widespread success of this…
Background: Deep learning models are typically trained using stochastic gradient descent or one of its variants. These methods update the weights using their gradient, estimated from a small fraction of the training data. It has been…
The gradient noise of SGD is considered to play a central role in the observed strong generalization abilities of deep learning. While past studies confirm that the magnitude and the covariance structure of gradient noise are critical for…