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Main Authors: Baek, David D., Liu, Ziming, Tegmark, Max
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.05916
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author Baek, David D.
Liu, Ziming
Tegmark, Max
author_facet Baek, David D.
Liu, Ziming
Tegmark, Max
contents We present GenEFT: an effective theory framework for shedding light on the statics and dynamics of neural network generalization, and illustrate it with graph learning examples. We first investigate the generalization phase transition as data size increases, comparing experimental results with information-theory-based approximations. We find generalization in a Goldilocks zone where the decoder is neither too weak nor too powerful. We then introduce an effective theory for the dynamics of representation learning, where latent-space representations are modeled as interacting particles (repons), and find that it explains our experimentally observed phase transition between generalization and overfitting as encoder and decoder learning rates are scanned. This highlights the power of physics-inspired effective theories for bridging the gap between theoretical predictions and practice in machine learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_05916
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GenEFT: Understanding Statics and Dynamics of Model Generalization via Effective Theory
Baek, David D.
Liu, Ziming
Tegmark, Max
Machine Learning
We present GenEFT: an effective theory framework for shedding light on the statics and dynamics of neural network generalization, and illustrate it with graph learning examples. We first investigate the generalization phase transition as data size increases, comparing experimental results with information-theory-based approximations. We find generalization in a Goldilocks zone where the decoder is neither too weak nor too powerful. We then introduce an effective theory for the dynamics of representation learning, where latent-space representations are modeled as interacting particles (repons), and find that it explains our experimentally observed phase transition between generalization and overfitting as encoder and decoder learning rates are scanned. This highlights the power of physics-inspired effective theories for bridging the gap between theoretical predictions and practice in machine learning.
title GenEFT: Understanding Statics and Dynamics of Model Generalization via Effective Theory
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.05916