Deep ReLU Networks Have Surprisingly Simple Polytopes

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Fan, Feng-Lei, Huang, Wei, Zhong, Xiangru, Ruan, Lecheng, Zeng, Tieyong, Xiong, Huan, Wang, Fei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Fan, Feng-Lei
Huang, Wei
Zhong, Xiangru
Ruan, Lecheng
Zeng, Tieyong
Xiong, Huan
Wang, Fei
author_facet Fan, Feng-Lei
Huang, Wei
Zhong, Xiangru
Ruan, Lecheng
Zeng, Tieyong
Xiong, Huan
Wang, Fei
contents A ReLU network is a piecewise linear function over polytopes. Figuring out the properties of such polytopes is of fundamental importance for the research and development of neural networks. So far, either theoretical or empirical studies on polytopes only stay at the level of counting their number, which is far from a complete characterization. Here, we propose to study the shapes of polytopes via the number of faces of the polytope. Then, by computing and analyzing the histogram of faces across polytopes, we find that a ReLU network has relatively simple polytopes under both initialization and gradient descent, although these polytopes can be rather diverse and complicated by a specific design. This finding can be appreciated as a kind of generalized implicit bias, subjected to the intrinsic geometric constraint in space partition of a ReLU network. Next, we perform a combinatorial analysis to explain why adding depth does not generate a more complicated polytope by bounding the average number of faces of polytopes with the dimensionality. Our results concretely reveal what kind of simple functions a network learns and what will happen when a network goes deep. Also, by characterizing the shape of polytopes, the number of faces can be a novel leverage for other problems, \textit{e.g.}, serving as a generic tool to explain the power of popular shortcut networks such as ResNet and analyzing the impact of different regularization strategies on a network's space partition.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2305_09145
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep ReLU Networks Have Surprisingly Simple Polytopes
Fan, Feng-Lei
Huang, Wei
Zhong, Xiangru
Ruan, Lecheng
Zeng, Tieyong
Xiong, Huan
Wang, Fei
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multimedia
A ReLU network is a piecewise linear function over polytopes. Figuring out the properties of such polytopes is of fundamental importance for the research and development of neural networks. So far, either theoretical or empirical studies on polytopes only stay at the level of counting their number, which is far from a complete characterization. Here, we propose to study the shapes of polytopes via the number of faces of the polytope. Then, by computing and analyzing the histogram of faces across polytopes, we find that a ReLU network has relatively simple polytopes under both initialization and gradient descent, although these polytopes can be rather diverse and complicated by a specific design. This finding can be appreciated as a kind of generalized implicit bias, subjected to the intrinsic geometric constraint in space partition of a ReLU network. Next, we perform a combinatorial analysis to explain why adding depth does not generate a more complicated polytope by bounding the average number of faces of polytopes with the dimensionality. Our results concretely reveal what kind of simple functions a network learns and what will happen when a network goes deep. Also, by characterizing the shape of polytopes, the number of faces can be a novel leverage for other problems, \textit{e.g.}, serving as a generic tool to explain the power of popular shortcut networks such as ResNet and analyzing the impact of different regularization strategies on a network's space partition.
title Deep ReLU Networks Have Surprisingly Simple Polytopes
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multimedia
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09145