A Canonicalization Perspective on Invariant and Equivariant Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ma, George, Wang, Yifei, Lim, Derek, Jegelka, Stefanie, Wang, Yisen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Ma, George
Wang, Yifei
Lim, Derek
Jegelka, Stefanie
Wang, Yisen
author_facet Ma, George
Wang, Yifei
Lim, Derek
Jegelka, Stefanie
Wang, Yisen
contents In many applications, we desire neural networks to exhibit invariance or equivariance to certain groups due to symmetries inherent in the data. Recently, frame-averaging methods emerged to be a unified framework for attaining symmetries efficiently by averaging over input-dependent subsets of the group, i.e., frames. What we currently lack is a principled understanding of the design of frames. In this work, we introduce a canonicalization perspective that provides an essential and complete view of the design of frames. Canonicalization is a classic approach for attaining invariance by mapping inputs to their canonical forms. We show that there exists an inherent connection between frames and canonical forms. Leveraging this connection, we can efficiently compare the complexity of frames as well as determine the optimality of certain frames. Guided by this principle, we design novel frames for eigenvectors that are strictly superior to existing methods -- some are even optimal -- both theoretically and empirically. The reduction to the canonicalization perspective further uncovers equivalences between previous methods. These observations suggest that canonicalization provides a fundamental understanding of existing frame-averaging methods and unifies existing equivariant and invariant learning methods. Code is available at https://github.com/PKU-ML/canonicalization.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_18378
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Canonicalization Perspective on Invariant and Equivariant Learning
Ma, George
Wang, Yifei
Lim, Derek
Jegelka, Stefanie
Wang, Yisen
Machine Learning
In many applications, we desire neural networks to exhibit invariance or equivariance to certain groups due to symmetries inherent in the data. Recently, frame-averaging methods emerged to be a unified framework for attaining symmetries efficiently by averaging over input-dependent subsets of the group, i.e., frames. What we currently lack is a principled understanding of the design of frames. In this work, we introduce a canonicalization perspective that provides an essential and complete view of the design of frames. Canonicalization is a classic approach for attaining invariance by mapping inputs to their canonical forms. We show that there exists an inherent connection between frames and canonical forms. Leveraging this connection, we can efficiently compare the complexity of frames as well as determine the optimality of certain frames. Guided by this principle, we design novel frames for eigenvectors that are strictly superior to existing methods -- some are even optimal -- both theoretically and empirically. The reduction to the canonicalization perspective further uncovers equivalences between previous methods. These observations suggest that canonicalization provides a fundamental understanding of existing frame-averaging methods and unifies existing equivariant and invariant learning methods. Code is available at https://github.com/PKU-ML/canonicalization.
title A Canonicalization Perspective on Invariant and Equivariant Learning
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.18378