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Grokking occurs when a model achieves high training accuracy but generalization to unseen test points happens long after that. This phenomenon was initially observed on a class of algebraic problems, such as learning modular arithmetic…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-02 Marcel Tomàs Bernal , Neil Rohit Mallinar , Mikhail Belkin

Training loss and accuracy are the standard signals used to monitor generalization during deep neural network training. Two well-documented phenomena complicate this picture: in grokking, train loss falls rapidly while test performance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Chi-Ning Chou , Oscar Uzdelewicz , Neng-Chun Chiu , Yao-Yuan Yang , SueYeon Chung

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

This paper focuses on predicting the occurrence of grokking in neural networks, a phenomenon in which perfect generalization emerges long after signs of overfitting or memorization are observed. It has been reported that grokking can only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-02 Pascal Jr. Tikeng Notsawo , Hattie Zhou , Mohammad Pezeshki , Irina Rish , Guillaume Dumas

The generalization mystery in deep learning is the following: Why do over-parameterized neural networks trained with gradient descent (GD) generalize well on real datasets even though they are capable of fitting random datasets of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-07 Satrajit Chatterjee , Piotr Zielinski

Grokking-delayed generalization that emerges well after a model has fit the training data-has been linked to robustness and representation quality. We ask whether this training regime also helps with machine unlearning, i.e., removing the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Yuanbang Liang , Yang Li

Robust generalization is a major challenge in deep learning, particularly when the number of trainable parameters is very large. In general, it is very difficult to know if the network has memorized a particular set of examples or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-06 Darshil Doshi , Aritra Das , Tianyu He , Andrey Gromov

We investigate grokking in transformers through the lens of inductive bias: dispositions arising from architecture or optimization that let the network prefer one solution over another. We first show that architectural choices such as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-09 Jaisidh Singh , Diganta Misra , Antonio Orvieto

This paper investigates the grokking phenomenon, which refers to the sudden transition from a long memorization to generalization observed during neural networks training, in the context of learning multiplication in finite-dimensional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Pascal Jr Tikeng Notsawo , Guillaume Dumas , Guillaume Rabusseau

Neural networks often exhibit emergent behavior, where qualitatively new capabilities arise from scaling up the amount of parameters, training data, or training steps. One approach to understanding emergence is to find continuous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-23 Neel Nanda , Lawrence Chan , Tom Lieberum , Jess Smith , Jacob Steinhardt

Neural networks often learn simple explanations that fit the majority of the data while memorizing exceptions that deviate from these explanations.This behavior leads to poor generalization when the learned explanations rely on spurious…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-11 Reza Bayat , Mohammad Pezeshki , Elvis Dohmatob , David Lopez-Paz , Pascal Vincent

In-context learning enables transformers to adapt to new tasks from a few examples at inference time, while grokking highlights that this generalization can emerge abruptly only after prolonged training. We study task generalization and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-15 Abdessamed Qchohi , Simone Rossi

Grokking, referring to the abrupt improvement in test accuracy after extended overfitting, offers valuable insights into the mechanisms of model generalization. Existing researches based on progress measures imply that grokking relies on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-15 Zihan Gu , Ruoyu Chen , Hua Zhang , Yue Hu , Xiaochun Cao

We study grokking, the onset of generalization long after overfitting, in a classical ridge regression setting. We prove end-to-end grokking results for learning over-parameterized linear regression models using gradient descent with weight…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-09 Mingyue Xu , Gal Vardi , Itay Safran

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

This paper presents the first study of grokking in practical LLM pretraining. Specifically, we investigate when an LLM memorizes the training data, when its generalization on downstream tasks starts to improve, and what happens if there is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Ziyue Li , Chenrui Fan , Tianyi Zhou

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

Neural networks trained by gradient descent (GD) have exhibited a number of surprising generalization behaviors. First, they can achieve a perfect fit to noisy training data and still generalize near-optimally, showing that overfitting can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-05 Zhiwei Xu , Yutong Wang , Spencer Frei , Gal Vardi , Wei Hu

One puzzling artifact in machine learning dubbed grokking is where delayed generalization is achieved tenfolds of iterations after near perfect overfitting to the training data. Focusing on the long delay itself on behalf of machine…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-06 Jaerin Lee , Bong Gyun Kang , Kihoon Kim , Kyoung Mu Lee

While Large Language Models (LLMs) excel at factual retrieval, they often struggle with the "curse of two-hop reasoning" in compositional tasks. Recent research suggests that parameter-sharing transformers can bridge this gap by forming a…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-15 Kaiyu He , Zhang Mian , Peilin Wu , Xinya Du , Zhiyu Chen