Yeonjong Shin — Page 2

arXiv2020

Trainability of ReLU networks and Data-dependent Initialization

In this paper, we study the trainability of rectified linear unit (ReLU) networks. A ReLU neuron is said to be dead if it only outputs a constant for any input. Two death states of neurons are introduced; tentative and permanent death. A network is then said to be trainable if the number of permanently dead neurons is sufficiently small for a learning task. We refer to the probability of a network being trainable as trainability. We show that a network being trainable is a necessary condition for successful training and the trainability serves as an upper bound of successful training rates. In order to quantify the trainability, we study the probability distribution of the number of active neurons at the initialization. In many applications, over-specified or over-parameterized neural networks are successfully employed and shown to be trained effectively. With the notion of trainability, we show that over-parameterization is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for minimizing the training loss. Furthermore, we propose a data-dependent initialization method in the over-parameterized setting. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method and our theoretical findings.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2018

Collapse of Deep and Narrow Neural Nets

Recent theoretical work has demonstrated that deep neural networks have superior performance over shallow networks, but their training is more difficult, e.g., they suffer from the vanishing gradient problem. This problem can be typically resolved by the rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation. However, here we show that even for such activation, deep and narrow neural networks (NNs) will converge to erroneous mean or median states of the target function depending on the loss with high probability. Deep and narrow NNs are encountered in solving partial differential equations with high-order derivatives. We demonstrate this collapse of such NNs both numerically and theoretically, and provide estimates of the probability of collapse. We also construct a diagram of a safe region for designing NNs that avoid the collapse to erroneous states. Finally, we examine different ways of initialization and normalization that may avoid the collapse problem. Asymmetric initializations may reduce the probability of collapse but do not totally eliminate it.

stat.ML↗