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Related papers: A Two-Phase Perspective on Deep Learning Dynamics

200 papers

In this paper, we advocate for two stages in a neural network's decision making process. The first is the existing feed-forward inference framework where patterns in given data are sensed and associated with previously learned patterns. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-20 Mohit Prabhushankar , Ghassan AlRegib

Grokking, a delayed generalization in neural networks after perfect training performance, has been observed in Transformers and MLPs, but the components driving it remain underexplored. We show that embeddings are central to grokking:…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-22 H. V. AlquBoj , Hilal AlQuabeh , Velibor Bojkovic , Munachiso Nwadike , Kentaro Inui

This paper studies emergent phenomena in neural networks by focusing on grokking where models suddenly generalize after delayed memorization. To understand this phase transition, we utilize higher-order mutual information to analyze the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-20 Kenzo Clauw , Sebastiano Stramaglia , Daniele Marinazzo

Grokking is a phenomenon where a model trained on an algorithmic task first overfits but, then, after a large amount of additional training, undergoes a phase transition to generalize perfectly. We empirically study the internal structure…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-22 William Merrill , Nikolaos Tsilivis , Aman Shukla

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

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

This paper investigates the dynamics of a deep neural network (DNN) learning interactions. Previous studies have discovered and mathematically proven that given each input sample, a well-trained DNN usually only encodes a small number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-17 Junpeng Zhang , Qing Li , Liang Lin , Quanshi Zhang

Delayed generalization, termed grokking, in a machine learning calculation occurs when the increase in test accuracy is delayed relative to the training accuracy. This paper examines grokking in the context of a dense neural network trained…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2026-02-06 Karolina Hutchison , David Yevick

While a lot of progress has been made in recent years, the dynamics of learning in deep nonlinear neural networks remain to this day largely misunderstood. In this work, we study the case of binary classification and prove various…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-15 Remi Tachet , Mohammad Pezeshki , Samira Shabanian , Aaron Courville , Yoshua Bengio

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are often trained on the premise that the complete training data set is provided ahead of time. However, in real-world scenarios, data often arrive in chunks over time. This leads to important considerations…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-21 Vijaya Raghavan T. Ramkumar , Elahe Arani , Bahram Zonooz

Grokking is a puzzling phenomenon in neural networks where full generalization occurs only after a substantial delay following the complete memorization of the training data. Previous research has linked this delayed generalization to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-12 Tiberiu Musat

We investigate the learning dynamics of fully-connected neural networks through the lens of gradient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), examining the behavior of first-order optimizers like Adam in non-convex objectives. By interpreting the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-28 Sokratis J. Anagnostopoulos , Juan Diego Toscano , Nikolaos Stergiopulos , George Em Karniadakis

We aim to understand grokking, a phenomenon where models generalize long after overfitting their training set. We present both a microscopic analysis anchored by an effective theory and a macroscopic analysis of phase diagrams describing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-17 Ziming Liu , Ouail Kitouni , Niklas Nolte , Eric J. Michaud , Max Tegmark , Mike Williams

Gradient-based learning in multi-layer neural networks displays a number of striking features. In particular, the decrease rate of empirical risk is non-monotone even after averaging over large batches. Long plateaus in which one observes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Raphaël Berthier , Andrea Montanari , Kangjie Zhou

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

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

This work reports deep-learning-unique first-order and second-order phase transitions, whose phenomenology closely follows that in statistical physics. In particular, we prove that the competition between prediction error and model…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-26 Liu Ziyin , Masahito Ueda

Current deep neural networks are highly overparameterized (up to billions of connection weights) and nonlinear. Yet they can fit data almost perfectly through variants of gradient descent algorithms and achieve unexpected levels of…

Generalization of deep neural networks remains one of the main open problems in machine learning. Previous theoretical works focused on deriving tight bounds of model complexity, while empirical works revealed that neural networks exhibit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-31 James Wang , Cheng-Lin Yang

Recent research has seen many behavioral comparisons between humans and deep neural networks (DNNs) in the domain of image classification. Often, comparison studies focus on the end-result of the learning process by measuring and comparing…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2024-07-15 Lukas S. Huber , Fred W. Mast , Felix A. Wichmann