Equidistribution-based training of Free Knot Splines and ReLU Neural Networks

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Appella, Simone, Arridge, Simon, Budd, Chris, Deveney, Teo, Kreusser, Lisa Maria
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912200274214912
author Appella, Simone
Arridge, Simon
Budd, Chris
Deveney, Teo
Kreusser, Lisa Maria
author_facet Appella, Simone
Arridge, Simon
Budd, Chris
Deveney, Teo
Kreusser, Lisa Maria
contents We consider the problem of univariate nonlinear function approximation using shallow neural networks (NN) with a rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation function. We show that the $L_2$ based approximation problem is ill-conditioned and the behaviour of optimisation algorithms used in training these networks degrades rapidly as the width of the network increases. This can lead to significantly poorer approximation in practice than expected from the theoretical expressivity of the ReLU architecture and traditional methods such as univariate Free Knot Splines (FKS). Univariate shallow ReLU NNs and FKS span the same function space, and thus have the same theoretical expressivity. However, the FKS representation remains well-conditioned as the number of knots increases. We leverage the theory of optimal piecewise linear interpolants to improve the training procedure for ReLU NNs. Using the equidistribution principle, we propose a two-level procedure for training the FKS by first solving the nonlinear problem of finding the optimal knot locations of the interpolating FKS, and then determine the optimal weights and knots of the FKS by solving a nearly linear, well-conditioned problem. The training of the FKS gives insights into how we can train a ReLU NN effectively, with an equally accurate approximation. We combine the training of the ReLU NN with an equidistribution-based loss to find the breakpoints of the ReLU functions. This is then combined with preconditioning the ReLU NN approximation to find the scalings of the ReLU functions. This fast, well-conditioned and reliable method finds an accurate shallow ReLU NN approximation to a univariate target function. We test this method on a series of regular, singular, and rapidly varying target functions and obtain good results, realising the expressivity of the shallow ReLU network in all cases. We then extend our results to deeper networks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_02153
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Equidistribution-based training of Free Knot Splines and ReLU Neural Networks
Appella, Simone
Arridge, Simon
Budd, Chris
Deveney, Teo
Kreusser, Lisa Maria
Machine Learning
Numerical Analysis
41A15, 65D07, 65M50, 68T07
We consider the problem of univariate nonlinear function approximation using shallow neural networks (NN) with a rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation function. We show that the $L_2$ based approximation problem is ill-conditioned and the behaviour of optimisation algorithms used in training these networks degrades rapidly as the width of the network increases. This can lead to significantly poorer approximation in practice than expected from the theoretical expressivity of the ReLU architecture and traditional methods such as univariate Free Knot Splines (FKS). Univariate shallow ReLU NNs and FKS span the same function space, and thus have the same theoretical expressivity. However, the FKS representation remains well-conditioned as the number of knots increases. We leverage the theory of optimal piecewise linear interpolants to improve the training procedure for ReLU NNs. Using the equidistribution principle, we propose a two-level procedure for training the FKS by first solving the nonlinear problem of finding the optimal knot locations of the interpolating FKS, and then determine the optimal weights and knots of the FKS by solving a nearly linear, well-conditioned problem. The training of the FKS gives insights into how we can train a ReLU NN effectively, with an equally accurate approximation. We combine the training of the ReLU NN with an equidistribution-based loss to find the breakpoints of the ReLU functions. This is then combined with preconditioning the ReLU NN approximation to find the scalings of the ReLU functions. This fast, well-conditioned and reliable method finds an accurate shallow ReLU NN approximation to a univariate target function. We test this method on a series of regular, singular, and rapidly varying target functions and obtain good results, realising the expressivity of the shallow ReLU network in all cases. We then extend our results to deeper networks.
title Equidistribution-based training of Free Knot Splines and ReLU Neural Networks
topic Machine Learning
Numerical Analysis
41A15, 65D07, 65M50, 68T07
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.02153