Related papers: Learning with Gradient Descent and Weakly Convex L…
We empirically demonstrate that full-batch gradient descent on neural network training objectives typically operates in a regime we call the Edge of Stability. In this regime, the maximum eigenvalue of the training loss Hessian hovers just…
Fitting a function by using linear combinations of a large number $N$ of `simple' components is one of the most fruitful ideas in statistical learning. This idea lies at the core of a variety of methods, from two-layer neural networks to…
We study the sample complexity of the best-case Empirical Risk Minimizer in the setting of stochastic convex optimization. We show that there exists an instance in which the sample size is linear in the dimension, learning is possible, but…
Traditional analyses of gradient descent optimization show that, when the largest eigenvalue of the loss Hessian - often referred to as the sharpness - is below a critical learning-rate threshold, then training is 'stable' and training loss…
Empirically it has been observed that the performance of deep neural networks steadily improves as we increase model size, contradicting the classical view on overfitting and generalization. Recently, the double descent phenomena has been…
Gradient descent is the primary workhorse for optimizing large-scale problems in machine learning. However, its performance is highly sensitive to the choice of the learning rate. A key limitation of gradient descent is its lack of natural…
In this paper, we theoretically prove that gradient descent can find a global minimum of non-convex optimization of all layers for nonlinear deep neural networks of sizes commonly encountered in practice. The theory developed in this paper…
A widely believed explanation for the remarkable generalization capacities of overparameterized neural networks is that the optimization algorithms used for training induce an implicit bias towards benign solutions. To grasp this…
Many tasks in machine learning and signal processing can be solved by minimizing a convex function of a measure. This includes sparse spikes deconvolution or training a neural network with a single hidden layer. For these problems, we study…
Recent work across many machine learning disciplines has highlighted that standard descent methods, even without explicit regularization, do not merely minimize the training error, but also exhibit an implicit bias. This bias is typically…
Minimizing the empirical risk is a popular training strategy, but for learning tasks where the data may be noisy or heavy-tailed, one may require many observations in order to generalize well. To achieve better performance under less…
We show that running gradient descent with variable learning rate guarantees loss $f(x) \leq 1.1 \cdot f(x^*) + \epsilon$ for the logistic regression objective, where the error $\epsilon$ decays exponentially with the number of iterations…
Existing analyses of neural network training often operate under the unrealistic assumption of an extremely small learning rate. This lies in stark contrast to practical wisdom and empirical studies, such as the work of J. Cohen et al.…
We demonstrate that applying an eventual decay to the learning rate (LR) in empirical risk minimization (ERM), where the mean-squared-error loss is minimized using standard gradient descent (GD) for training a two-layer neural network with…
We consider the problem of learning a one-hidden-layer neural network with non-overlapping convolutional layer and ReLU activation, i.e., $f(\mathbf{Z}, \mathbf{w}, \mathbf{a}) = \sum_j a_j\sigma(\mathbf{w}^T\mathbf{Z}_j)$, in which both…
Traditional analyses of gradient descent show that when the largest eigenvalue of the Hessian, also known as the sharpness $S(\theta)$, is bounded by $2/\eta$, training is "stable" and the training loss decreases monotonically. Recent…
Classical analyses of gradient descent (GD) define a stability threshold based on the largest eigenvalue of the loss Hessian, often termed sharpness. When the learning rate lies below this threshold, training is stable and the loss…
Gradient descent is one of the most widely used iterative algorithms in modern statistical learning. However, its precise algorithmic dynamics in high-dimensional settings remain only partially understood, which has limited its broader…
We show that in a variety of large-scale deep learning scenarios the gradient dynamically converges to a very small subspace after a short period of training. The subspace is spanned by a few top eigenvectors of the Hessian (equal to the…
Classical assumptions like strong convexity and Lipschitz smoothness often fail to capture the nature of deep learning optimization problems, which are typically non-convex and non-smooth, making traditional analyses less applicable. This…