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Main Authors: Molina, Juan, Petrache, Mircea, Costabal, Francisco Sahli, Courdurier, Matías
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.14957
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author Molina, Juan
Petrache, Mircea
Costabal, Francisco Sahli
Courdurier, Matías
author_facet Molina, Juan
Petrache, Mircea
Costabal, Francisco Sahli
Courdurier, Matías
contents Recent works have shown that traditional Neural Network (NN) architectures display a marked frequency bias in the learning process. Namely, the NN first learns the low-frequency features before learning the high-frequency ones. In this study, we rigorously develop a partial differential equation (PDE) that unravels the frequency dynamics of the error for a 2-layer NN in the Neural Tangent Kernel regime. Furthermore, using this insight, we explicitly demonstrate how an appropriate choice of distributions for the initialization weights can eliminate or control the frequency bias. We focus our study on the Fourier Features model, an NN where the first layer has sine and cosine activation functions, with frequencies sampled from a prescribed distribution. In this setup, we experimentally validate our theoretical results and compare the NN dynamics to the solution of the PDE using the finite element method. Finally, we empirically show that the same principle extends to multi-layer NNs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_14957
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Understanding the dynamics of the frequency bias in neural networks
Molina, Juan
Petrache, Mircea
Costabal, Francisco Sahli
Courdurier, Matías
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Recent works have shown that traditional Neural Network (NN) architectures display a marked frequency bias in the learning process. Namely, the NN first learns the low-frequency features before learning the high-frequency ones. In this study, we rigorously develop a partial differential equation (PDE) that unravels the frequency dynamics of the error for a 2-layer NN in the Neural Tangent Kernel regime. Furthermore, using this insight, we explicitly demonstrate how an appropriate choice of distributions for the initialization weights can eliminate or control the frequency bias. We focus our study on the Fourier Features model, an NN where the first layer has sine and cosine activation functions, with frequencies sampled from a prescribed distribution. In this setup, we experimentally validate our theoretical results and compare the NN dynamics to the solution of the PDE using the finite element method. Finally, we empirically show that the same principle extends to multi-layer NNs.
title Understanding the dynamics of the frequency bias in neural networks
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.14957