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Main Authors: Diamzon, Jeremy, Venturi, Daniele
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21059
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author Diamzon, Jeremy
Venturi, Daniele
author_facet Diamzon, Jeremy
Venturi, Daniele
contents We develop new uncertainty propagation methods for feed-forward neural network architectures with leaky ReLU activation functions subject to random perturbations in the input vectors. In particular, we derive analytical expressions for the probability density function (PDF) of the neural network output and its statistical moments as a function of the input uncertainty and the parameters of the network, i.e., weights and biases. A key finding is that an appropriate linearization of the leaky ReLU activation function yields accurate statistical results even for large perturbations in the input vectors. This can be attributed to the way information propagates through the network. We also propose new analytically tractable Gaussian copula surrogate models to approximate the full joint PDF of the neural network output. To validate our theoretical results, we conduct Monte Carlo simulations and a thorough error analysis on a multi-layer neural network representing a nonlinear integro-differential operator between two polynomial function spaces. Our findings demonstrate excellent agreement between the theoretical predictions and Monte Carlo simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_21059
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Uncertainty propagation in feed-forward neural network models
Diamzon, Jeremy
Venturi, Daniele
Machine Learning
We develop new uncertainty propagation methods for feed-forward neural network architectures with leaky ReLU activation functions subject to random perturbations in the input vectors. In particular, we derive analytical expressions for the probability density function (PDF) of the neural network output and its statistical moments as a function of the input uncertainty and the parameters of the network, i.e., weights and biases. A key finding is that an appropriate linearization of the leaky ReLU activation function yields accurate statistical results even for large perturbations in the input vectors. This can be attributed to the way information propagates through the network. We also propose new analytically tractable Gaussian copula surrogate models to approximate the full joint PDF of the neural network output. To validate our theoretical results, we conduct Monte Carlo simulations and a thorough error analysis on a multi-layer neural network representing a nonlinear integro-differential operator between two polynomial function spaces. Our findings demonstrate excellent agreement between the theoretical predictions and Monte Carlo simulations.
title Uncertainty propagation in feed-forward neural network models
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21059