Neural Estimation of the Information Bottleneck Based on a Mapping Approach

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Chen, Lingyi, Wu, Shitong, Xu, Sicheng, Wu, Huihui, Zhang, Wenyi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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_version_ 1866911078440501248
author Chen, Lingyi
Wu, Shitong
Xu, Sicheng
Wu, Huihui
Zhang, Wenyi
author_facet Chen, Lingyi
Wu, Shitong
Xu, Sicheng
Wu, Huihui
Zhang, Wenyi
contents The information bottleneck (IB) method is a technique designed to extract meaningful information related to one random variable from another random variable, and has found extensive applications in machine learning problems. In this paper, neural network based estimation of the IB problem solution is studied, through the lens of a novel formulation of the IB problem. Via exploiting the inherent structure of the IB functional and leveraging the mapping approach, the proposed formulation of the IB problem involves only a single variable to be optimized, and subsequently is readily amenable to data-driven estimators based on neural networks. A theoretical analysis is conducted to guarantee that the neural estimator asymptotically solves the IB problem, and the numerical experiments on both synthetic and MNIST datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the neural estimator.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_19832
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Neural Estimation of the Information Bottleneck Based on a Mapping Approach
Chen, Lingyi
Wu, Shitong
Xu, Sicheng
Wu, Huihui
Zhang, Wenyi
Information Theory
The information bottleneck (IB) method is a technique designed to extract meaningful information related to one random variable from another random variable, and has found extensive applications in machine learning problems. In this paper, neural network based estimation of the IB problem solution is studied, through the lens of a novel formulation of the IB problem. Via exploiting the inherent structure of the IB functional and leveraging the mapping approach, the proposed formulation of the IB problem involves only a single variable to be optimized, and subsequently is readily amenable to data-driven estimators based on neural networks. A theoretical analysis is conducted to guarantee that the neural estimator asymptotically solves the IB problem, and the numerical experiments on both synthetic and MNIST datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the neural estimator.
title Neural Estimation of the Information Bottleneck Based on a Mapping Approach
topic Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19832