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Main Authors: Cho, Dong Kyu, Hwang, Inwoo, Lee, Sanghack
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12745
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author Cho, Dong Kyu
Hwang, Inwoo
Lee, Sanghack
author_facet Cho, Dong Kyu
Hwang, Inwoo
Lee, Sanghack
contents Data augmentation is a popular tool for single source domain generalization, which expands the source domain by generating simulated ones, improving generalization on unseen target domains. In this work, we show that the performance of such augmentation-based methods in the target domains universally fluctuates during training, posing challenges in model selection under realistic scenarios. We argue that the fluctuation stems from the inability of the model to accumulate the knowledge learned from diverse augmentations, exacerbating feature distortion during training. Based on this observation, we propose a novel generalization method, coined Parameter-Space Ensemble with Entropy Regularization (PEER), that uses a proxy model to learn the augmented data on behalf of the main model. The main model is updated by averaging its parameters with the proxy model, progressively accumulating knowledge over the training steps. Maximizing the mutual information between the output representations of the two models guides the learning process of the proxy model, mitigating feature distortion during training. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of PEER in reducing the OOD performance fluctuation and enhancing generalization across various datasets, including PACS, Digits, Office-Home, and VLCS. Notably, our method with simple random augmentation achieves state-of-the-art performance, surpassing prior approaches on sDG that utilize complex data augmentation strategies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_12745
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PEER pressure: Model-to-Model Regularization for Single Source Domain Generalization
Cho, Dong Kyu
Hwang, Inwoo
Lee, Sanghack
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Data augmentation is a popular tool for single source domain generalization, which expands the source domain by generating simulated ones, improving generalization on unseen target domains. In this work, we show that the performance of such augmentation-based methods in the target domains universally fluctuates during training, posing challenges in model selection under realistic scenarios. We argue that the fluctuation stems from the inability of the model to accumulate the knowledge learned from diverse augmentations, exacerbating feature distortion during training. Based on this observation, we propose a novel generalization method, coined Parameter-Space Ensemble with Entropy Regularization (PEER), that uses a proxy model to learn the augmented data on behalf of the main model. The main model is updated by averaging its parameters with the proxy model, progressively accumulating knowledge over the training steps. Maximizing the mutual information between the output representations of the two models guides the learning process of the proxy model, mitigating feature distortion during training. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of PEER in reducing the OOD performance fluctuation and enhancing generalization across various datasets, including PACS, Digits, Office-Home, and VLCS. Notably, our method with simple random augmentation achieves state-of-the-art performance, surpassing prior approaches on sDG that utilize complex data augmentation strategies.
title PEER pressure: Model-to-Model Regularization for Single Source Domain Generalization
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12745