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We investigate random feature models in which neural networks sampled from a prescribed initialization ensemble are frozen and used as random features, with only the readout weights optimized. Adopting a statistical-physics viewpoint, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Taeyoung Kim

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

Grokking typically achieves similar loss to ordinary, "steady", learning. We ask whether these different learning paths - grokking versus ordinary training - lead to fundamental differences in the learned models. To do so we compare the…

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

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

For humans, language production and comprehension is sensitive to the hierarchical structure of sentences. In natural language processing, past work has questioned how effectively neural sequence models like transformers capture this…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-31 Shikhar Murty , Pratyusha Sharma , Jacob Andreas , Christopher D. Manning

While the phenomenon of grokking, i.e., delayed generalization, has been studied extensively, it remains an open problem whether there is a mathematical framework that characterizes what kind of features will emerge, how and in which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Yuandong Tian

The asymptotically precise estimation of the generalization of kernel methods has recently received attention due to the parallels between neural networks and their associated kernels. However, prior works derive such estimates for training…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-19 Maksim Velikanov , Maxim Panov , Dmitry Yarotsky

Neural networks often exhibit emergent behavior, where qualitatively new capabilities arise from scaling up the amount of parameters, training data, or training steps. One approach to understanding emergence is to find continuous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-23 Neel Nanda , Lawrence Chan , Tom Lieberum , Jess Smith , Jacob Steinhardt

At the heart of machine learning lies the question of generalizability of learned rules over previously unseen data. While over-parameterized models based on neural networks are now ubiquitous in machine learning applications, our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-04 Melikasadat Emami , Mojtaba Sahraee-Ardakan , Parthe Pandit , Sundeep Rangan , Alyson K. Fletcher

Understanding how large neural networks avoid memorizing training data is key to explaining their high generalization performance. To examine the structure of when and where memorization occurs in a deep network, we use a recently developed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Cory Stephenson , Suchismita Padhy , Abhinav Ganesh , Yue Hui , Hanlin Tang , SueYeon Chung

Generalization is the ability of machine learning models to make accurate predictions on new data by learning from training data. However, understanding generalization of quantum machine learning models has been a major challenge. Here, we…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-08-07 Tobias Haug , M. S. Kim

In this technical report, we explore the behavior of Recursive Feature Machines (RFMs), a type of novel kernel machine that recursively learns features via the average gradient outer product, through a series of experiments on regression…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-29 Arunav Gupta , Rohit Mishra , William Luu , Mehdi Bouassami

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

Neural networks readily learn a subset of the modular arithmetic tasks, while failing to generalize on the rest. This limitation remains unmoved by the choice of architecture and training strategies. On the other hand, an analytical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-06 Darshil Doshi , Tianyu He , Aritra Das , Andrey Gromov

The generalization error curve of certain kernel regression method aims at determining the exact order of generalization error with various source condition, noise level and choice of the regularization parameter rather than the minimax…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-26 Yicheng Li , Weiye Gan , Zuoqiang Shi , Qian Lin

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

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 explore the critical data size in language models, a threshold that marks a fundamental shift from quick memorization to slow generalization. We formalize the phase transition under the grokking configuration into the Data Efficiency…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-05-24 Xuekai Zhu , Yao Fu , Bowen Zhou , Zhouhan Lin

A fundamental problem in machine learning is to understand how neural networks make accurate predictions, while seemingly bypassing the curse of dimensionality. A possible explanation is that common training algorithms for neural networks…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-01-10 Adityanarayanan Radhakrishnan , Mikhail Belkin , Dmitriy Drusvyatskiy