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Related papers: Unifying Grokking and Double Descent

200 papers

Grokking, the unusual phenomenon for algorithmic datasets where generalization happens long after overfitting the training data, has remained elusive. We aim to understand grokking by analyzing the loss landscapes of neural networks,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-24 Ziming Liu , Eric J. Michaud , Max Tegmark

We show that a variety of modern deep learning tasks exhibit a "double-descent" phenomenon where, as we increase model size, performance first gets worse and then gets better. Moreover, we show that double descent occurs not just as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-06 Preetum Nakkiran , Gal Kaplun , Yamini Bansal , Tristan Yang , Boaz Barak , Ilya Sutskever

The training dynamics of deep neural networks often defy expectations, even as these models form the foundation of modern machine learning. Two prominent examples are grokking, where test performance improves abruptly long after the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-28 Keitaro Sakamoto , Issei Sato

Grokking -- the delayed transition from memorization to generalization in small algorithmic tasks -- remains poorly understood. We present a geometric analysis of optimization dynamics in transformers trained on modular arithmetic. PCA of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Yongzhong Xu

A key challenge for the machine learning community is to understand and accelerate the training dynamics of deep networks that lead to delayed generalisation and emergent robustness to input perturbations, also known as grokking. Prior work…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-01 Thomas Walker , Ahmed Imtiaz Humayun , Randall Balestriero , Richard Baraniuk

We study the dynamics of gradient flow with small weight decay on general training losses $F: \mathbb{R}^d \to \mathbb{R}$. Under mild regularity assumptions and assuming convergence of the unregularised gradient flow, we show that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-06 Etienne Boursier , Scott Pesme , Radu-Alexandru Dragomir

Understanding neural network's (NN) generalizability remains a central question in deep learning research. The special phenomenon of grokking, where NNs abruptly generalize long after the training performance reaches a near-perfect level,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Xiaotian Zhang , Yue Shang , Entao Yang , Ge Zhang

A major challenge in understanding the generalization of deep learning is to explain why (stochastic) gradient descent can exploit the network architecture to find solutions that have good generalization performance when using high capacity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-12 Yifan Wu , Barnabas Poczos , Aarti Singh

We discuss two solvable grokking (generalisation beyond overfitting) models in a rule learning scenario. We show that grokking is a phase transition and find exact analytic expressions for the critical exponents, grokking probability, and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-10-28 Bojan Žunkovič , Enej Ilievski

We demonstrate the existence of a complexity phase transition in neural networks by studying the grokking phenomenon, where networks suddenly transition from memorization to generalization long after overfitting their training data. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-22 Branton DeMoss , Silvia Sapora , Jakob Foerster , Nick Hawes , Ingmar Posner

In this paper, we studied two identically-trained neural networks (i.e. networks with the same architecture, trained on the same dataset using the same algorithm, but with different initialization) and found that their outputs discrepancy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-26 Yifan Luo , Bin Dong

The lack of mathematical tractability of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) has hindered progress towards having a unified convergence analysis of training algorithms, in the general setting. We propose a unified optimization framework for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-24 Hadi Ghauch , Hossein Shokri-Ghadikolaei , Carlo Fischione , Mikael Skoglund

Combining empirical risk minimization with capacity control is a classical strategy in machine learning when trying to control the generalization gap and avoid overfitting, as the model class capacity gets larger. Yet, in modern deep…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-18 Marc Lafon , Alexandre Thomas

Recent evidence has shown the existence of a so-called double-descent and even triple-descent behavior for the generalization error of deep-learning models. This important phenomenon commonly appears in implemented neural network…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-25 Antoine Bodin , Nicolas Macris

Grokking the delayed transition from memorization to generalization in neural networks remains poorly understood, in part because prior empirical studies confound the roles of architecture, optimization, and regularization. We present a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-27 Shalima Binta Manir , Anamika Paul Rupa

Grokking in modular arithmetic has established itself as the quintessential fruit fly experiment, serving as a critical domain for investigating the mechanistic origins of model generalization. Despite its significance, existing research…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Junjie Zhang , Zhen Shen , Gang Xiong , Xisong Dong

Grokking, the sudden transition from memorization to generalization, is characterized by the emergence of low-dimensional representations, yet the mechanism underlying this organization remains elusive. We propose that intrinsic task…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Hyeonbin Hwang , Yeachan Park

We present a simple neural network that can learn modular arithmetic tasks and exhibits a sudden jump in generalization known as ``grokking''. Concretely, we present (i) fully-connected two-layer networks that exhibit grokking on various…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Andrey Gromov

A fairly comprehensive analysis is presented for the gradient descent dynamics for training two-layer neural network models in the situation when the parameters in both layers are updated. General initialization schemes as well as general…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-27 Weinan E , Chao Ma , Lei Wu

A machine learning (ML) system must learn not only to match the output of a target function on a training set, but also to generalize to novel situations in order to yield accurate predictions at deployment. In most practical applications,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-13 Clare Lyle