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Hauptverfasser: Couto, Carlos, Mourão, José, Figueiredo, Mário A. T., Ribeiro, Pedro
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15606
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author Couto, Carlos
Mourão, José
Figueiredo, Mário A. T.
Ribeiro, Pedro
author_facet Couto, Carlos
Mourão, José
Figueiredo, Mário A. T.
Ribeiro, Pedro
contents Near an optimal learning point of a neural network, the learning performance of gradient descent dynamics is dictated by the Hessian matrix of the loss function with respect to the network parameters. We characterize the Hessian eigenspectrum for some classes of teacher-student problems, when the teacher and student networks have matching weights, showing that the smaller eigenvalues of the Hessian determine long-time learning performance. For linear networks, we analytically establish that for large networks the spectrum asymptotically follows a convolution of a scaled chi-square distribution with a scaled Marchenko-Pastur distribution. We numerically analyse the Hessian spectrum for polynomial and other non-linear networks. Furthermore, we show that the rank of the Hessian matrix can be seen as an effective number of parameters for networks using polynomial activation functions. For a generic non-linear activation function, such as the error function, we empirically observe that the Hessian matrix is always full rank.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_15606
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Teacher-Student Perspective on the Dynamics of Learning Near the Optimal Point
Couto, Carlos
Mourão, José
Figueiredo, Mário A. T.
Ribeiro, Pedro
Machine Learning
68T07
Near an optimal learning point of a neural network, the learning performance of gradient descent dynamics is dictated by the Hessian matrix of the loss function with respect to the network parameters. We characterize the Hessian eigenspectrum for some classes of teacher-student problems, when the teacher and student networks have matching weights, showing that the smaller eigenvalues of the Hessian determine long-time learning performance. For linear networks, we analytically establish that for large networks the spectrum asymptotically follows a convolution of a scaled chi-square distribution with a scaled Marchenko-Pastur distribution. We numerically analyse the Hessian spectrum for polynomial and other non-linear networks. Furthermore, we show that the rank of the Hessian matrix can be seen as an effective number of parameters for networks using polynomial activation functions. For a generic non-linear activation function, such as the error function, we empirically observe that the Hessian matrix is always full rank.
title A Teacher-Student Perspective on the Dynamics of Learning Near the Optimal Point
topic Machine Learning
68T07
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15606