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Related papers: Token Sample Complexity of Attention

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We analyze the convergence rate of the randomized Newton-like method introduced by Qu et. al. (2016) for smooth and convex objectives, which uses random coordinate blocks of a Hessian-over-approximation matrix $\bM$ instead of the true…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2020-02-13 Mojmír Mutný , Michał Dereziński , Andreas Krause

A fundamental problem in adversarial machine learning is to quantify how much training data is needed in the presence of evasion attacks. In this paper we address this issue within the framework of PAC learning, focusing on the class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-13 Pascale Gourdeau , Varun Kanade , Marta Kwiatkowska , James Worrell

We determine the computational complexity of approximately counting and sampling independent sets of a given size in bounded-degree graphs. That is, we identify a critical density $\alpha_c(\Delta)$ and provide (i) for $\alpha <…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-01-26 Ewan Davies , Will Perkins

Attention is a key component of Transformers, which have recently achieved considerable success in natural language processing. Hence, attention is being extensively studied to investigate various linguistic capabilities of Transformers,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2020-10-07 Goro Kobayashi , Tatsuki Kuribayashi , Sho Yokoi , Kentaro Inui

We present Token-UNet, adopting the TokenLearner and TokenFuser modules to encase Transformers into UNets. While Transformers have enabled global interactions among input elements in medical imaging, current computational challenges hinder…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Louis Fabrice Tshimanga , Andrea Zanola , Federico Del Pup , Manfredo Atzori

This paper studies the concentration properties of random codes. Specifically, we show that, for discrete memoryless channels, the error exponent of a randomly generated code with pairwise-independent codewords converges in probability to…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2022-03-16 Lan V. Truong , Giuseppe Cocco , Josep Font-Segura , Albert Guillén i Fàbregas

Self-attention in Transformers relies on globally normalized softmax weights, causing all tokens to compete for influence at every layer. When composed across depth, this interaction pattern induces strong synchronization dynamics that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Jingkun Liu , Yisong Yue , Max Welling , Yue Song

\textit{Attention} computes the dependency between representations, and it encourages the model to focus on the important selective features. Attention-based models, such as Transformer and graph attention network (GAT), are widely utilized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Kyungwoo Song , Yohan Jung , Dongjun Kim , Il-Chul Moon

We study the frequentist properties of Bayesian statistical inference for the stochastic block model, with an unknown number of classes of varying sizes. We equip the space of vertex labellings with a prior on the number of classes and,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-05-05 J. van Waaij , B. J. K. Kleijn

When and how can an attention mechanism learn to selectively attend to informative tokens, thereby enabling detection of weak, rare, and sparsely located features? We address these questions theoretically in a sparse-token classification…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Nicholas Barnfield , Hugo Cui , Yue M. Lu

Language models for code such as CodeBERT offer the capability to learn advanced source code representation, but their opacity poses barriers to understanding of captured properties. Recent attention analysis studies provide initial…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-11-23 Mootez Saad , Tushar Sharma

Attention mechanisms have been extensively employed in various applications, including time series modeling, owing to their capacity to capture intricate dependencies; however, their utility is often constrained by quadratic computational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-06 Mingtao Zhang , Guoli Yang , Zhanxing Zhu , Mengzhu Wang , Xiaoying Bai

Transformer self-attention can be interpreted as a gradient flow on the unit sphere, in which tokens evolve under softmax interaction potentials and tend to form clusters. While prior work has established clustering behavior for single-head…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Ayan Pendharkar

We generalize finite-sample bounds for convex clustering to the setting where affinity weights appearing in the objective correspond to a general connected graph. These bounds and their analysis lead to a better understanding of clustering…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-26 Sam Rosen , Jason Xu

An attention matrix of a transformer self-attention sublayer can provably be decomposed into two components and only one of them (effective attention) contributes to the model output. This leads us to ask whether visualizing effective…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2021-05-20 Kaiser Sun , Ana Marasović

The attention mechanism in text generation is memory-bounded due to its sequential characteristics. Therefore, off-chip memory accesses should be minimized for faster execution. Although previous methods addressed this by pruning…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2024-07-23 Junyoung Park , Myeonggu Kang , Yunki Han , Yanggon Kim , Jaekang Shin , Lee-Sup Kim

We study the hardmax limit of self-attention dynamics for token embeddings obtained in the zero-temperature ($\beta\to+\infty$) regime, and relate it to the finite-$\beta$ setting. In this limit, the update rule can be viewed as a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-14 Albert Alcalde , Borjan Geshkovski , Domènec Ruiz-Balet

We present Top-Theta (Top-$\theta$) Attention, a training-free method for sparsifying transformer attention during inference. Our key insight is that static, per-head thresholds can be calibrated to retain the desired constant number of…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-08-25 Konstantin Berestizshevsky , Renzo Andri , Lukas Cavigelli

Entropy rate of sequential data-streams naturally quantifies the complexity of the generative process. Thus entropy rate fluctuations could be used as a tool to recognize dynamical perturbations in signal sources, and could potentially be…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2014-03-24 Ishanu Chattopadhyay , Hod Lipson

We consider the problem of global optimization of a function over a continuous domain. In our setup, we can evaluate the function sequentially at points of our choice and the evaluations are noisy. We frame it as a continuum-armed bandit…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-21 Kinjal Basu , Souvik Ghosh