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Related papers: How to explain grokking

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The grokking phenomenon as reported by Power et al. ( arXiv:2201.02177 ) refers to a regime where a long period of overfitting is followed by a seemingly sudden transition to perfect generalization. In this paper, we attempt to reveal the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Vimal Thilak , Etai Littwin , Shuangfei Zhai , Omid Saremi , Roni Paiss , Joshua Susskind

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

In this paper we propose to study generalization of neural networks on small algorithmically generated datasets. In this setting, questions about data efficiency, memorization, generalization, and speed of learning can be studied in great…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-07 Alethea Power , Yuri Burda , Harri Edwards , Igor Babuschkin , Vedant Misra

We study the stochastic motion of an intruder in a dilute driven granular gas. All particles are coupled to a thermostat, representing the external energy source, which is the sum of random forces and a viscous drag. The dynamics of the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2010-04-27 Alessandro Sarracino , Dario Villamaina , Giulio Costantini , Andrea Puglisi

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

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 collapse, i.e., the emergence of highly symmetric, class-wise clustered representations, is frequently observed in deep networks and is often assumed to reflect or enable generalization. In parallel, flatness of the loss landscape…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Ting Han , Linara Adilova , Henning Petzka , Jens Kleesiek , Michael Kamp

Neural networks sometimes exhibit grokking, a phenomenon where perfect or near-perfect performance is achieved on a validation set well after the same performance has been obtained on the corresponding training set. In this workshop paper,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Jack Miller , Patrick Gleeson , Charles O'Neill , Thang Bui , Noam Levi

We briefly review the problem of Brownian motion and describe some intriguing facets. The problem is first treated in its original form as enunciated by Einstein, Langevin, and others. Then, utilizing the problem of Brownian motion as a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-02-17 Sushanta Dattagupta , Aritra Ghosh

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

Deep learning sometimes appears to work in unexpected ways. In pursuit of a deeper understanding of its surprising behaviors, we investigate the utility of a simple yet accurate model of a trained neural network consisting of a sequence of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-04 Alan Jeffares , Alicia Curth , Mihaela van der Schaar

We study whether transformers can learn to implicitly reason over parametric knowledge, a skill that even the most capable language models struggle with. Focusing on two representative reasoning types, composition and comparison, we…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-01 Boshi Wang , Xiang Yue , Yu Su , Huan Sun

We present the reduction of generalized Langevin equations to a coordinate-only stochastic model, which in its exact form, involves a forcing term with memory and a general Gaussian noise. It will be shown that a similar…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2019-10-04 Lina Ma , Xiantao Li , Chun Liu

Grokking -- the abrupt transition from memorization to generalization after prolonged training -- has been linked to confinement on low-dimensional execution manifolds in modular arithmetic. Whether this mechanism extends beyond arithmetic…

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

In this short communication we present an original way to couple the Brownian motion and the heat equation. More in general, we suggest a way for coupling the Langevin equation for a particle, which describes a single realization of its…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2016-06-17 Emiliano Cristiani

These notes are an introduction to the theory of stochastic processes based on several sources. The presentation mainly follows the books of van Kampen and Wio, except for the introduction, which is taken from the book of Gardiner and the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 J. L. Garcia-Palacios

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 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

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

Recent studies have uncovered intriguing phenomena in deep learning, such as grokking, double descent, and emergent abilities in large language models, which challenge human intuition and are crucial for a deeper understanding of neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-27 Yufei Huang , Shengding Hu , Xu Han , Zhiyuan Liu , Maosong Sun