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Related papers: Measuring Sharpness in Grokking

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This paper demonstrates that grokking behavior in modular arithmetic with a modulus P in a neural network can be controlled by modifying the profile of the activation function as well as the depth and width of the model. Plotting the even…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-11 Ahmed Salah , David Yevick

When training deep neural networks with gradient descent, sharpness often increases -- a phenomenon known as progressive sharpening -- before saturating at the edge of stability. Although commonly observed in practice, the underlying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Geonhui Yoo , Minhak Song , Chulhee Yun

Modern neural networks can achieve high accuracy while remaining poorly calibrated, producing confidence estimates that do not match empirical correctness. Yet calibration is often treated as a post-hoc attribute. We take a different…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Alessandro Morosini , Matea Gjika , Tomaso Poggio , Pierfrancesco Beneventano

Grokking describes a delayed generalization phenomenon in which a neural network achieves perfect training accuracy long before validation accuracy improves, followed by an abrupt transition to strong generalization. Existing detection…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Shreel Golwala

Grokking, the sudden generalization that occurs after prolonged overfitting, is a surprising phenomenon challenging our understanding of deep learning. Although significant progress has been made in understanding grokking, the reasons…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Lucas Prieto , Melih Barsbey , Pedro A. M. Mediano , Tolga Birdal

We present a theoretical explanation of the ``grokking'' phenomenon, where a model generalizes long after overfitting,for the originally-studied problem of modular addition. First, we show that early in gradient descent, when the ``kernel…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-18 Mohamad Amin Mohamadi , Zhiyuan Li , Lei Wu , Danica J. Sutherland

We propose that learning in deep neural networks proceeds in two phases: a rapid curve fitting phase followed by a slower compression or coarse graining phase. This view is supported by the shared temporal structure of three phenomena:…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2025-07-28 Robert de Mello Koch , Animik Ghosh

It is well understood that neural networks with carefully hand-picked weights provide powerful function approximation and that they can be successfully trained in over-parametrized regimes. Since over-parametrization ensures zero training…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-21 G. Welper

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

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

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

Critical-data-size accounts of grokking suggest a natural post-threshold intuition: once training data is sufficient to identify the underlying rule, additional data should accelerate validation convergence. We show that this intuition can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Shin So , Kyelim Lee , Albert No

We design and analyze a new paradigm for building supervised learning networks, driven only by local optimization rules without relying on a global error function. Traditional neural networks with a fixed topology are made up of identical…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2024-10-04 S. Barland , L. Gil

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

Spectral bias, the tendency of neural networks to learn low frequencies first, can be both a blessing and a curse. While it enhances the generalization capabilities by suppressing high-frequency noise, it can be a limitation in scientific…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Shuai Jiang , Alexey Voronin , Eric Cyr , Ben Southworth

Existing accounts of grokking explain the phenomena in terms of mechanistic frameworks such as circuit efficiency or lazy-to-rich transitions. However, despite a known dependence between grokking and model size, how model capacity shapes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Yiding Song , Hanming Ye

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

Grokking, the abrupt transition from memorization to generalisation after extended training, suggests the presence of competing solution basins with distinct statistical properties. We study this phenomenon through the lens of Singular…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-08 Ben Cullen , Sergio Estan-Ruiz , Riya Danait , Jiayi Li

Training Neural Networks (NNs) without overfitting is difficult; detecting that overfitting is difficult as well. We present a novel Random Matrix Theory method that detects the onset of overfitting in deep learning models without access to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Hari K. Prakash , Charles H Martin

Grokking - the delayed transition from memorisation to generalisation in neural networks - remains poorly understood. We study this phenomenon through the geometry of learned representations and identify a consistent empirical signature…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Truong Xuan Khanh , Truong Quynh Hoa , Luu Duc Trung , Phan Thanh Duc