The effect of priors on Learning with Restricted Boltzmann Machines

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Manzan, Gianluca, Tantari, Daniele
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Manzan, Gianluca
Tantari, Daniele
author_facet Manzan, Gianluca
Tantari, Daniele
contents Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs) are generative models designed to learn from data with a rich underlying structure. In this work, we explore a teacher-student setting where a student RBM learns from examples generated by a teacher RBM, with a focus on the effect of the unit priors on learning efficiency. We consider a parametric class of priors that interpolate between continuous (Gaussian) and binary variables. This approach models various possible choices of visible units, hidden units, and weights for both the teacher and student RBMs. By analyzing the phase diagram of the posterior distribution in both the Bayes optimal and mismatched regimes, we demonstrate the existence of a triple point that defines the critical dataset size necessary for learning through generalization. The critical size is strongly influenced by the properties of the teacher, and thus the data, but is unaffected by the properties of the student RBM. Nevertheless, a prudent choice of student priors can facilitate training by expanding the so-called signal retrieval region, where the machine generalizes effectively.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_02623
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The effect of priors on Learning with Restricted Boltzmann Machines
Manzan, Gianluca
Tantari, Daniele
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Machine Learning
Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs) are generative models designed to learn from data with a rich underlying structure. In this work, we explore a teacher-student setting where a student RBM learns from examples generated by a teacher RBM, with a focus on the effect of the unit priors on learning efficiency. We consider a parametric class of priors that interpolate between continuous (Gaussian) and binary variables. This approach models various possible choices of visible units, hidden units, and weights for both the teacher and student RBMs. By analyzing the phase diagram of the posterior distribution in both the Bayes optimal and mismatched regimes, we demonstrate the existence of a triple point that defines the critical dataset size necessary for learning through generalization. The critical size is strongly influenced by the properties of the teacher, and thus the data, but is unaffected by the properties of the student RBM. Nevertheless, a prudent choice of student priors can facilitate training by expanding the so-called signal retrieval region, where the machine generalizes effectively.
title The effect of priors on Learning with Restricted Boltzmann Machines
topic Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.02623