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Main Authors: Muyskens, Amanda, Priest, Benjamin W., Goumiri, Imene R., Schneider, Michael D.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08311
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author Muyskens, Amanda
Priest, Benjamin W.
Goumiri, Imene R.
Schneider, Michael D.
author_facet Muyskens, Amanda
Priest, Benjamin W.
Goumiri, Imene R.
Schneider, Michael D.
contents Kernels representing limiting cases of neural network architectures have recently gained popularity. However, the application and performance of these new kernels compared to existing options, such as the Matern kernel, is not well studied. We take a practical approach to explore the neural network Gaussian process (NNGP) kernel and its application to data in Gaussian process regression. We first demonstrate the necessity of normalization to produce valid NNGP kernels and explore related numerical challenges. We further demonstrate that the predictions from this model are quite inflexible, and therefore do not vary much over the valid hyperparameter sets. We then demonstrate a surprising result that the predictions given from the NNGP kernel correspond closely to those given by the Matern kernel under specific circumstances, which suggests a deep similarity between overparameterized deep neural networks and the Matern kernel. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the NNGP kernel as compared to the Matern kernel on three benchmark data cases, and we conclude that for its flexibility and practical performance, the Matern kernel is preferred to the novel NNGP in practical applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_08311
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Correspondence of NNGP Kernel and the Matern Kernel
Muyskens, Amanda
Priest, Benjamin W.
Goumiri, Imene R.
Schneider, Michael D.
Machine Learning
Kernels representing limiting cases of neural network architectures have recently gained popularity. However, the application and performance of these new kernels compared to existing options, such as the Matern kernel, is not well studied. We take a practical approach to explore the neural network Gaussian process (NNGP) kernel and its application to data in Gaussian process regression. We first demonstrate the necessity of normalization to produce valid NNGP kernels and explore related numerical challenges. We further demonstrate that the predictions from this model are quite inflexible, and therefore do not vary much over the valid hyperparameter sets. We then demonstrate a surprising result that the predictions given from the NNGP kernel correspond closely to those given by the Matern kernel under specific circumstances, which suggests a deep similarity between overparameterized deep neural networks and the Matern kernel. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the NNGP kernel as compared to the Matern kernel on three benchmark data cases, and we conclude that for its flexibility and practical performance, the Matern kernel is preferred to the novel NNGP in practical applications.
title Correspondence of NNGP Kernel and the Matern Kernel
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08311