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Main Authors: Ji, Guangda, Zhu, Zhanxing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.10090
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author Ji, Guangda
Zhu, Zhanxing
author_facet Ji, Guangda
Zhu, Zhanxing
contents Knowledge distillation is a strategy of training a student network with guide of the soft output from a teacher network. It has been a successful method of model compression and knowledge transfer. However, currently knowledge distillation lacks a convincing theoretical understanding. On the other hand, recent finding on neural tangent kernel enables us to approximate a wide neural network with a linear model of the network's random features. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the knowledge distillation of a wide neural network. First we provide a transfer risk bound for the linearized model of the network. Then we propose a metric of the task's training difficulty, called data inefficiency. Based on this metric, we show that for a perfect teacher, a high ratio of teacher's soft labels can be beneficial. Finally, for the case of imperfect teacher, we find that hard labels can correct teacher's wrong prediction, which explains the practice of mixing hard and soft labels.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2010_10090
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Knowledge Distillation in Wide Neural Networks: Risk Bound, Data Efficiency and Imperfect Teacher
Ji, Guangda
Zhu, Zhanxing
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Knowledge distillation is a strategy of training a student network with guide of the soft output from a teacher network. It has been a successful method of model compression and knowledge transfer. However, currently knowledge distillation lacks a convincing theoretical understanding. On the other hand, recent finding on neural tangent kernel enables us to approximate a wide neural network with a linear model of the network's random features. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the knowledge distillation of a wide neural network. First we provide a transfer risk bound for the linearized model of the network. Then we propose a metric of the task's training difficulty, called data inefficiency. Based on this metric, we show that for a perfect teacher, a high ratio of teacher's soft labels can be beneficial. Finally, for the case of imperfect teacher, we find that hard labels can correct teacher's wrong prediction, which explains the practice of mixing hard and soft labels.
title Knowledge Distillation in Wide Neural Networks: Risk Bound, Data Efficiency and Imperfect Teacher
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.10090