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arXiv research

A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.

168,657 papers · 148 categories

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68137205273 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for activation normalization

Recent seminal work at the intersection of deep neural networks practice and random matrix theory has linked the convergence speed and robustness of these networks with the combination of random weight initialization and nonlinear activation function in use. Building on those principles, we introduce a process to trans…

2019-05-03abs ↗pdf ↗

Layer normalization with activations prevents Gram matrix rank collapse at initialization.

problem Rank collapse in Gram matrices at initialization slows training in deep networks.
method Proved that layer normalization, with activation layers, biases Gram matrix towards identity matrix at exponential rate.
result Layer normalization with activations biases Gram matrix towards identity matrix at exponential rate with depth at initialization.

Online Normalization is a new technique for normalizing the hidden activations of a neural network. Like Batch Normalization, it normalizes the sample dimension. While Online Normalization does not use batches, it is as accurate as Batch Normalization. We resolve a theoretical limitation of Batch Normalization by intro…

2019-05-15abs ↗pdf ↗

We propose a simple extension to the ReLU-family of activation functions that allows them to shift the mean activation across a layer towards zero. Combined with proper weight initialization, this alleviates the need for normalization layers. We explore the training of deep vanilla recurrent neural networks (RNNs) with…

2017-09-12abs ↗pdf ↗

Study shows big winner stocks significantly impact passive and active investment strategies.

problem Impact of big winner stocks on passive and active investment strategies.
method Numerical and analytical techniques applied to historical stock price data.
result Concentrated portfolios underperform equally weighted indexes due to missing big winner stocks.

LCW reduces activation shift in neural networks, improving training efficiency and generalization.

problem Activation shift in neural networks leading to non-zero mean preactivation values.
method Linearly constrained weights (LCW) to reduce activation shift in fully connected and convolutional layers.
result LCW resolves the vanishing gradient problem and improves generalization of neural networks.

Batch normalization (BN) is a technique to normalize activations in intermediate layers of deep neural networks. Its tendency to improve accuracy and speed up training have established BN as a favorite technique in deep learning. Yet, despite its enormous success, there remains little consensus on the exact reason and …

2018-06-01abs ↗pdf ↗

Enhances DNN robustness and accuracy with L2,L_{2,\infty} normalization.

problem Improving the robustness and accuracy of deep neural networks.
method Introducing L2,L_{2,\infty} normalization of weight matrices in DNNs with Relu activation.
result Lower bound for robustness measure in terms of L2,L_{2,\infty} norm and upper bound for Rademacher complexity.

FF algorithm uses goodness as a measure of input quality, derived from likelihood-ratio tests.

problem Training each layer locally with a goodness measure.
method FF algorithm uses a likelihood-ratio test to define goodness, which is the sum of squared activations normalized between layers.
result The goodness measure is a sufficient statistic for a likelihood-ratio test, explaining the FF algorithm's performance.

Deep Learning has revolutionized vision via convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and natural language processing via recurrent neural networks (RNNs). However, success stories of Deep Learning with standard feed-forward neural networks (FNNs) are rare. FNNs that perform well are typically shallow and, therefore cannot …

2017-06-08abs ↗pdf ↗

Study active nematic forces on curved surfaces, revealing new coupling mechanisms.

problem Understanding active nematic forces on curved surfaces.
method Developed a thermodynamically consistent surface model with nematic activity, analyzed topological defects.
result Active defects contribute both tangential and normal forces on curved surfaces.

Improved CNN accuracy for encrypted data using approximate activation functions.

problem Low accuracy in classifying encrypted data using homomorphic encryption.
method Used a fourth-order polynomial approximation of the Swish activation function with batch normalization for homomorphic encryption.
result Achieved 99.22% accuracy on MNIST and 80.48% on CIFAR-10, improving by 0.04% and 4.11% respectively.

Normalization techniques play an important role in supporting efficient and often more effective training of deep neural networks. While conventional methods explicitly normalize the activations, we suggest to add a loss term instead. This new loss term encourages the variance of the activations to be stable and not va…

2018-11-21abs ↗pdf ↗

Batch Normalization (BN) is capable of accelerating the training of deep models by centering and scaling activations within mini-batches. In this work, we propose Decorrelated Batch Normalization (DBN), which not just centers and scales activations but whitens them. We explore multiple whitening techniques, and find th…

2018-04-23abs ↗pdf ↗

FF algorithm uses goodness as a likelihood-ratio test for scalar normalization.

problem Training each layer locally with scalar goodness.
method FF algorithm uses a likelihood-ratio test with squared goodness as the sufficient statistic.
result The FF algorithm generalizes to anisotropic and heavy-tailed populations.

The paper proposes methods to find a shared active subspace for multivariate vector-valued functions.

problem Minimizing the deviation between function evaluations in the original and reconstructed spaces.
method Manipulating gradients or SPD matrices to identify a shared structure.
result Summing SPD matrices often identifies the best shared active subspace.

Equity activity is an essential topic for financial market studies. To explore its statistical regularities, we comprehensively examine the trading value, a measure of the equity activity, of the 3314 most-traded stocks in the U.S. equity market and find that (i) the trading values follow a log-normal distribution; (ii…

2009-11-22abs ↗pdf ↗

This paper analyzes how normalization layers improve neural network training.

problem Improving generalization performance and training speed of neural networks.
method Global convergence analysis of two-layer neural networks with ReLU activations and Weight Normalization.
result Introduction of normalization layers changes the optimization landscape, enabling faster convergence.

Researchers infer gene activity in dividing cells, accounting for protein inheritance and division history.

problem Inferring protein production kinetics in dividing cells due to protein inheritance and division history.
method Adapted conditional normalizing flows to approximate intractable likelihoods from simulated data.
result Glc3 gene is mostly inactive under stress, with brief and transient expression.

Multiplicative stochasticity such as Dropout improves the robustness and generalizability of deep neural networks. Here, we further demonstrate that always-on multiplicative stochasticity combined with simple threshold neurons are sufficient operations for deep neural networks. We call such models Neural Sampling Machi…

2019-10-27abs ↗pdf ↗

This paper benchmarks Bayesian models' ability to estimate predictive correlations, especially for active learning.

problem Benchmarking how accurately Bayesian models estimate predictive correlations, especially in active learning.
method Considered transductive active learning as a benchmark, introduced meta-correlations and cross-normalized likelihoods.
result Meta-correlations and cross-normalized likelihoods can efficiently evaluate predictive correlations and are consistent with TAL performance.

Researchers relax the CVF's smoothness requirement to create more flexible flow models.

problem Challenges in constructing flexible density models due to the CVF's smoothness requirement.
method Introduce L\mathcal{L}-diffeomorphisms as generalized transformations that may violate smoothness on zero Lebesgue-measure sets.
result The relaxation allows for the use of non-smooth activation functions like ReLU in residual flows.

This paper explains how batch normalization auto-tunes the regularization parameter based on data statistics.

problem Batch normalization accelerates deep learning training but the exact relationship to regularization is unclear.
method Theoretical analysis and empirical validation of batch normalization's role in auto-tuning the regularization parameter.
result Batch normalization auto-tunes the regularization parameter based on data statistics.

Researchers enhance EfficientNet models for practical efficiency on Graphcore IPU.

problem Improving practical efficiency of EfficientNet models on high-performance accelerators.
method Group convolutions, proxy-normalized activations, and reduced training resolution.
result Improves practical efficiency for both training and inference on Graphcore IPU.

Real-time personalization for HAR models learns from new users without prior data.

problem Poor performance of HAR models on new users without labeled data.
method Incremental online domain adaptation using batch normalization.
result Personalized HAR models adapt to new users in real-time.

AL-SPCE improves reliability analysis for complex systems with active learning and SPCE.

problem Efficiently analyzing reliability of complex, computationally expensive models with intrinsic randomness.
method Active learning framework using stochastic polynomial chaos expansions (SPCE) to reduce computational burden.
result AL-SPCE maintains high accuracy in reliability estimates while significantly improving efficiency.

We study the role of depth in training randomly initialized overparameterized neural networks. We give a general result showing that depth improves trainability of neural networks by improving the conditioning of certain kernel matrices of the input data. This result holds for arbitrary non-linear activation functions …

2020-02-04abs ↗pdf ↗

In this work we investigate the reasons why Batch Normalization (BN) improves the generalization performance of deep networks. We argue that one major reason, distinguishing it from data-independent normalization methods, is randomness of batch statistics. This randomness appears in the parameters rather than in activa…

2018-11-01abs ↗pdf ↗

Anomalies are intuitively easy for human experts to understand, but they are hard to define mathematically. Therefore, in order to have performance guarantees in unsupervised anomaly detection, priors need to be assumed on what the anomalies are. By contrast, active learning provides the necessary priors through approp…

2018-05-23abs ↗pdf ↗

Normalization layers are a staple in state-of-the-art deep neural network architectures. They are widely believed to stabilize training, enable higher learning rate, accelerate convergence and improve generalization, though the reason for their effectiveness is still an active research topic. In this work, we challenge…

2019-01-27abs ↗pdf ↗

Active learning method optimizes seismic fragility curve estimation.

problem Optimizing calls to complex numerical models for fragility curve estimation.
method Importance sampling based active learning for parametric seismic fragility curve estimation.
result The method optimizes the estimation of fragility curves with mathematical rigor.