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Related papers: Tracing the Path to Grokking: Embeddings, Dropout,…

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Standard optimization theories struggle to explain grokking, where generalization occurs long after training convergence. While geometric studies attribute this to slow drift, they often overlook the interaction between the optimizer's…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Pratyush Acharya , Habish Dhakal

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 in transformers trained on algorithmic tasks is characterized by a long delay between training-set fit and abrupt generalization, but the source of that delay remains poorly understood. In encoder-decoder arithmetic models, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Laura Gomezjurado Gonzalez

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

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

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

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

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

\emph{Memorization} in neural networks lacks a precise operational definition and is often inferred from the grokking regime, where training accuracy saturates while test accuracy remains very low. We identify a previously unreported third…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Hari K Prakash , Charles H Martin

Grokking is the phenomenon whereby, unlike the training performance, which peaks early in the training process, the test/generalization performance of a model stagnates over arbitrarily many epochs and then suddenly jumps to usually close…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Ali Saheb Pasand , Elvis Dohmatob

Grokking -- the abrupt transition from memorization to generalization long after near-zero training loss -- has been studied mainly in single-task settings. We extend geometric analysis to multi-task modular arithmetic, training…

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

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

Dropout, a simple and effective way to train deep neural networks, has led to a number of impressive empirical successes and spawned many recent theoretical investigations. However, the gap between dropout's training and inference phases,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-02-17 Xuezhe Ma , Yingkai Gao , Zhiting Hu , Yaoliang Yu , Yuntian Deng , Eduard Hovy

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

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

We propose a guided dropout regularizer for deep networks based on the evidence of a network prediction defined as the firing of neurons in specific paths. In this work, we utilize the evidence at each neuron to determine the probability of…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2021-01-22 Andrea Zunino , Sarah Adel Bargal , Pietro Morerio , Jianming Zhang , Stan Sclaroff , Vittorio Murino

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 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

Despite their empirical success, how diffusion models generalize remains poorly understood from a mechanistic perspective. We demonstrate that diffusion models trained with flow-matching objectives exhibit grokking--delayed generalization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Joon Hyeok Kim , Yong-Hyun Park , Mattis Dalsætra Østby , Jiatao Gu

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