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Related papers: A Theory of Generalization in Deep Learning

200 papers

Why do deep networks generalize well? In contrast to classical generalization theory, we approach this fundamental question by examining not only inputs and outputs, but the evolution of internal features. Our study suggests a phenomenon of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-06 Tianyu Ruan , Kuo Gai , Shihua Zhang

It is by now well-established that modern over-parameterized models seem to elude the bias-variance tradeoff and generalize well despite overfitting noise. Many recent works attempt to analyze this phenomenon in the relatively tractable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-21 Daniel Barzilai , Ohad Shamir

Classical statistical learning theory predicts that overparameterized models should exhibit severe overfitting, yet modern deep neural networks with far more parameters than training samples consistently generalize well. This contradiction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Zeran Johannsen

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

Deep learning models have lately shown great performance in various fields such as computer vision, speech recognition, speech translation, and natural language processing. However, alongside their state-of-the-art performance, it is still…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-09 Daniel Jakubovitz , Raja Giryes , Miguel R. D. Rodrigues

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 phenomenon of delayed generalization, is often attributed to the depth and compositional structure of deep neural networks. We study grokking in one of the simplest possible settings: the learning of a linear model with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Nataraj Das , Atreya Vedantam , Chandrashekar Lakshminarayanan

In wide neural networks, the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) remains approximately constant during training, providing a powerful theoretical tool for studying training dynamics, generalization, and connections to kernel methods. However, this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Jonathan Plenk , Sergio Calvo-Ordonez , Alvaro Cartea , Yarin Gal , Mark van der Wilk , Kamil Ciosek

We revisit on-average algorithmic stability of GD for training overparameterised shallow neural networks and prove new generalisation and excess risk bounds without the NTK or PL assumptions. In particular, we show oracle type bounds which…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-11-10 Dominic Richards , Ilja Kuzborskij

Sequential training from task to task is becoming one of the major objects in deep learning applications such as continual learning and transfer learning. Nevertheless, it remains unclear under what conditions the trained model's…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-21 Ryo Karakida , Shotaro Akaho

It has long been argued that minibatch stochastic gradient descent can generalize better than large batch gradient descent in deep neural networks. However recent papers have questioned this claim, arguing that this effect is simply a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-29 Samuel L. Smith , Erich Elsen , Soham De

Modern neural networks are often operated in a strongly overparametrized regime: they comprise so many parameters that they can interpolate the training set, even if actual labels are replaced by purely random ones. Despite this, they…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-06-10 Andrea Montanari , Yiqiao Zhong

Over-parameterized deep neural networks trained by simple first-order methods are known to be able to fit any labeling of data. Such over-fitting ability hinders generalization when mislabeled training examples are present. On the other…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-06 Wei Hu , Zhiyuan Li , Dingli Yu

Continual learning, the ability of a model to adapt to an ongoing sequence of tasks without forgetting earlier ones, is a central goal of artificial intelligence. To better understand its underlying mechanisms, we study the limitations of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-21 Hossein Taheri , Avishek Ghosh , Arya Mazumdar

Recent work has shown that training wide neural networks with gradient descent is formally equivalent to computing the mean of the posterior distribution in a Gaussian Process (GP) with the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) as the prior…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-11 Sergio Calvo-Ordoñez , Konstantina Palla , Kamil Ciosek

In this work, we propose a notion of practical learnability grounded in finite sample settings, and develop a conjugate learning theoretical framework based on convex conjugate duality to characterize this learnability property. Building on…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-20 Binchuan Qi

We propose that the grokking phenomenon, where the train loss of a neural network decreases much earlier than its test loss, can arise due to a neural network transitioning from lazy training dynamics to a rich, feature learning regime. To…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-04-12 Tanishq Kumar , Blake Bordelon , Samuel J. Gershman , Cengiz Pehlevan

In the problem of domain generalization (DG), there are labeled training data sets from several related prediction problems, and the goal is to make accurate predictions on future unlabeled data sets that are not known to the learner. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-01-08 Gilles Blanchard , Aniket Anand Deshmukh , Urun Dogan , Gyemin Lee , Clayton Scott

Symmetries (transformations by group actions) are present in many datasets, and leveraging them holds considerable promise for improving predictions in machine learning. In this work, we aim to understand when and how deep networks -- with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-27 Andrea Perin , Stephane Deny

The goal of this thesis is to improve our understanding of the internal mechanisms by which deep artificial neural networks create meaningful representations and are able to generalize. We focus on the challenge of characterizing the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-29 Diego Doimo