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Main Authors: Yang, Suorong, Zong, Jie, Wang, Lihang, Qin, Ziheng, Gan, Hai, Zhou, Pengfei, Wang, Kai, You, Yang, Shen, Furao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00434
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author Yang, Suorong
Zong, Jie
Wang, Lihang
Qin, Ziheng
Gan, Hai
Zhou, Pengfei
Wang, Kai
You, Yang
Shen, Furao
author_facet Yang, Suorong
Zong, Jie
Wang, Lihang
Qin, Ziheng
Gan, Hai
Zhou, Pengfei
Wang, Kai
You, Yang
Shen, Furao
contents Data augmentation has been widely employed to improve the generalization of deep neural networks. Most existing methods apply fixed or random transformations. However, we find that sample difficulty evolves along with the model's generalization capabilities in dynamic training environments. As a result, applying uniform or stochastic augmentations, without accounting for such dynamics, can lead to a mismatch between augmented data and the model's evolving training needs, ultimately degrading training effectiveness. To address this, we introduce SADA, a Sample-Aware Dynamic Augmentation that performs on-the-fly adjustment of augmentation strengths based on each sample's evolving influence on model optimization. Specifically, we estimate each sample's influence by projecting its gradient onto the accumulated model update direction and computing the temporal variance within a local training window. Samples with low variance, indicating stable and consistent influence, are augmented more strongly to emphasize diversity, while unstable samples receive milder transformations to preserve semantic fidelity and stabilize learning. Our method is lightweight, which does not require auxiliary models or policy tuning. It can be seamlessly integrated into existing training pipelines as a plug-and-play module. Experiments across various benchmark datasets and model architectures show consistent improvements of SADA, including +7.3\% on fine-grained tasks and +4.3\% on long-tailed datasets, highlighting the method's effectiveness and practicality.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_00434
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On-the-Fly Data Augmentation via Gradient-Guided and Sample-Aware Influence Estimation
Yang, Suorong
Zong, Jie
Wang, Lihang
Qin, Ziheng
Gan, Hai
Zhou, Pengfei
Wang, Kai
You, Yang
Shen, Furao
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Data augmentation has been widely employed to improve the generalization of deep neural networks. Most existing methods apply fixed or random transformations. However, we find that sample difficulty evolves along with the model's generalization capabilities in dynamic training environments. As a result, applying uniform or stochastic augmentations, without accounting for such dynamics, can lead to a mismatch between augmented data and the model's evolving training needs, ultimately degrading training effectiveness. To address this, we introduce SADA, a Sample-Aware Dynamic Augmentation that performs on-the-fly adjustment of augmentation strengths based on each sample's evolving influence on model optimization. Specifically, we estimate each sample's influence by projecting its gradient onto the accumulated model update direction and computing the temporal variance within a local training window. Samples with low variance, indicating stable and consistent influence, are augmented more strongly to emphasize diversity, while unstable samples receive milder transformations to preserve semantic fidelity and stabilize learning. Our method is lightweight, which does not require auxiliary models or policy tuning. It can be seamlessly integrated into existing training pipelines as a plug-and-play module. Experiments across various benchmark datasets and model architectures show consistent improvements of SADA, including +7.3\% on fine-grained tasks and +4.3\% on long-tailed datasets, highlighting the method's effectiveness and practicality.
title On-the-Fly Data Augmentation via Gradient-Guided and Sample-Aware Influence Estimation
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00434