The Dimension Strikes Back with Gradients: Generalization of Gradient Methods in Stochastic Convex Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Schliserman, Matan, Sherman, Uri, Koren, Tomer
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Schliserman, Matan
Sherman, Uri
Koren, Tomer
author_facet Schliserman, Matan
Sherman, Uri
Koren, Tomer
contents We study the generalization performance of gradient methods in the fundamental stochastic convex optimization setting, focusing on its dimension dependence. First, for full-batch gradient descent (GD) we give a construction of a learning problem in dimension $d=O(n^2)$, where the canonical version of GD (tuned for optimal performance of the empirical risk) trained with $n$ training examples converges, with constant probability, to an approximate empirical risk minimizer with $Ω(1)$ population excess risk. Our bound translates to a lower bound of $Ω(\sqrt{d})$ on the number of training examples required for standard GD to reach a non-trivial test error, answering an open question raised by Feldman (2016) and Amir, Koren, and Livni (2021b) and showing that a non-trivial dimension dependence is unavoidable. Furthermore, for standard one-pass stochastic gradient descent (SGD), we show that an application of the same construction technique provides a similar $Ω(\sqrt{d})$ lower bound for the sample complexity of SGD to reach a non-trivial empirical error, despite achieving optimal test performance. This again provides an exponential improvement in the dimension dependence compared to previous work (Koren, Livni, Mansour, and Sherman, 2022), resolving an open question left therein.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_12058
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
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spellingShingle The Dimension Strikes Back with Gradients: Generalization of Gradient Methods in Stochastic Convex Optimization
Schliserman, Matan
Sherman, Uri
Koren, Tomer
Machine Learning
We study the generalization performance of gradient methods in the fundamental stochastic convex optimization setting, focusing on its dimension dependence. First, for full-batch gradient descent (GD) we give a construction of a learning problem in dimension $d=O(n^2)$, where the canonical version of GD (tuned for optimal performance of the empirical risk) trained with $n$ training examples converges, with constant probability, to an approximate empirical risk minimizer with $Ω(1)$ population excess risk. Our bound translates to a lower bound of $Ω(\sqrt{d})$ on the number of training examples required for standard GD to reach a non-trivial test error, answering an open question raised by Feldman (2016) and Amir, Koren, and Livni (2021b) and showing that a non-trivial dimension dependence is unavoidable. Furthermore, for standard one-pass stochastic gradient descent (SGD), we show that an application of the same construction technique provides a similar $Ω(\sqrt{d})$ lower bound for the sample complexity of SGD to reach a non-trivial empirical error, despite achieving optimal test performance. This again provides an exponential improvement in the dimension dependence compared to previous work (Koren, Livni, Mansour, and Sherman, 2022), resolving an open question left therein.
title The Dimension Strikes Back with Gradients: Generalization of Gradient Methods in Stochastic Convex Optimization
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12058