A Theoretical Framework for Preventing Class Collapse in Supervised Contrastive Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lee, Chungpa, Oh, Jeongheon, Lee, Kibok, Sohn, Jy-yong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lee, Chungpa
Oh, Jeongheon
Lee, Kibok
Sohn, Jy-yong
author_facet Lee, Chungpa
Oh, Jeongheon
Lee, Kibok
Sohn, Jy-yong
contents Supervised contrastive learning (SupCL) has emerged as a prominent approach in representation learning, leveraging both supervised and self-supervised losses. However, achieving an optimal balance between these losses is challenging; failing to do so can lead to class collapse, reducing discrimination among individual embeddings in the same class. In this paper, we present theoretically grounded guidelines for SupCL to prevent class collapse in learned representations. Specifically, we introduce the Simplex-to-Simplex Embedding Model (SSEM), a theoretical framework that models various embedding structures, including all embeddings that minimize the supervised contrastive loss. Through SSEM, we analyze how hyperparameters affect learned representations, offering practical guidelines for hyperparameter selection to mitigate the risk of class collapse. Our theoretical findings are supported by empirical results across synthetic and real-world datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_08203
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Theoretical Framework for Preventing Class Collapse in Supervised Contrastive Learning
Lee, Chungpa
Oh, Jeongheon
Lee, Kibok
Sohn, Jy-yong
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Supervised contrastive learning (SupCL) has emerged as a prominent approach in representation learning, leveraging both supervised and self-supervised losses. However, achieving an optimal balance between these losses is challenging; failing to do so can lead to class collapse, reducing discrimination among individual embeddings in the same class. In this paper, we present theoretically grounded guidelines for SupCL to prevent class collapse in learned representations. Specifically, we introduce the Simplex-to-Simplex Embedding Model (SSEM), a theoretical framework that models various embedding structures, including all embeddings that minimize the supervised contrastive loss. Through SSEM, we analyze how hyperparameters affect learned representations, offering practical guidelines for hyperparameter selection to mitigate the risk of class collapse. Our theoretical findings are supported by empirical results across synthetic and real-world datasets.
title A Theoretical Framework for Preventing Class Collapse in Supervised Contrastive Learning
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.08203