Deconstructing the Goldilocks Zone of Neural Network Initialization

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Hauptverfasser: Vysogorets, Artem, Dawid, Anna, Kempe, Julia
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Vysogorets, Artem
Dawid, Anna
Kempe, Julia
author_facet Vysogorets, Artem
Dawid, Anna
Kempe, Julia
contents The second-order properties of the training loss have a massive impact on the optimization dynamics of deep learning models. Fort & Scherlis (2019) discovered that a large excess of positive curvature and local convexity of the loss Hessian is associated with highly trainable initial points located in a region coined the "Goldilocks zone". Only a handful of subsequent studies touched upon this relationship, so it remains largely unexplained. In this paper, we present a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the Goldilocks zone for homogeneous neural networks. In particular, we derive the fundamental condition resulting in excess of positive curvature of the loss, explaining and refining its conventionally accepted connection to the initialization norm. Further, we relate the excess of positive curvature to model confidence, low initial loss, and a previously unknown type of vanishing cross-entropy loss gradient. To understand the importance of excessive positive curvature for trainability of deep networks, we optimize fully-connected and convolutional architectures outside the Goldilocks zone and analyze the emergent behaviors. We find that strong model performance is not perfectly aligned with the Goldilocks zone, calling for further research into this relationship.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_03579
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deconstructing the Goldilocks Zone of Neural Network Initialization
Vysogorets, Artem
Dawid, Anna
Kempe, Julia
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
The second-order properties of the training loss have a massive impact on the optimization dynamics of deep learning models. Fort & Scherlis (2019) discovered that a large excess of positive curvature and local convexity of the loss Hessian is associated with highly trainable initial points located in a region coined the "Goldilocks zone". Only a handful of subsequent studies touched upon this relationship, so it remains largely unexplained. In this paper, we present a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the Goldilocks zone for homogeneous neural networks. In particular, we derive the fundamental condition resulting in excess of positive curvature of the loss, explaining and refining its conventionally accepted connection to the initialization norm. Further, we relate the excess of positive curvature to model confidence, low initial loss, and a previously unknown type of vanishing cross-entropy loss gradient. To understand the importance of excessive positive curvature for trainability of deep networks, we optimize fully-connected and convolutional architectures outside the Goldilocks zone and analyze the emergent behaviors. We find that strong model performance is not perfectly aligned with the Goldilocks zone, calling for further research into this relationship.
title Deconstructing the Goldilocks Zone of Neural Network Initialization
topic Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03579