It is well known that, for most datasets, the use of large-size minibatches for Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) typically leads to slow convergence and poor generalization. On the other hand, large minibatches are of great practical interest as they allow for a better exploitation of modern GPUs. Previous literature …
New sampling technique improves KGC model performance.
problem Ignoring entity neighbors in minibatches affects KGC model training.
method Random-walk based minibatch sampling.
result Proposed method achieves state-of-the-art performance on DB100K.
Minibatching is a very well studied and highly popular technique in supervised learning, used by practitioners due to its ability to accelerate training through better utilization of parallel processing power and reduction of stochastic variance. Another popular technique is importance sampling -- a strategy for prefer…
Deep convolutional neural networks are known to be unstable during training at high learning rate unless normalization techniques are employed. Normalizing weights or activations allows the use of higher learning rates, resulting in faster convergence and higher test accuracy. Batch normalization requires minibatch sta…
Machine learning, especially deep neural networks, has been rapidly developed in fields including computer vision, speech recognition and reinforcement learning. Although Mini-batch SGD is one of the most popular stochastic optimization methods in training deep networks, it shows a slow convergence rate due to the larg…
Adaptive batch sizes improve local gradient methods in distributed training.
problem Communication bottlenecks in distributed deep learning.
method Adaptive batch size strategies for local gradient methods.
result Adaptive batch sizes reduce minibatch gradient variance and improve training efficiency.
Paper proposes a method to estimate variance reduction in DNN training using importance sampling.
problem Challenges in assessing variance reduction during DNN training using importance sampling.
method Proposes a method for estimating variance reduction using minibatches sampled under importance sampling.
result Demonstrates consistent reduction in variance, improved training efficiency, and enhanced model accuracy.
Recent work has argued that stochastic gradient descent can approximate the Bayesian uncertainty in model parameters near local minima. In this work we develop a similar correspondence for minibatch natural gradient descent (NGD). We prove that for sufficiently small learning rates, if the model predictions on the trai…
Advances few-shot classification by treating it as supervised learning and proposing new training techniques.
problem Formulating the ability of humans to learn from limited data in machine learning.
method Formulated few-shot classification as a supervised learning problem and introduced multi-episode and cross-way training techniques.
result Proposed training strategies accelerate the training process without accuracy loss.
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a popular optimization method which has been applied to many important machine learning tasks such as Support Vector Machines and Deep Neural Networks. In order to parallelize SGD, minibatch training is often employed. The standard approach is to uniformly sample a minibatch at each…
Study on the noise in SGD minibatches near local minima.
problem Understanding the noise in SGD minibatches near local minima.
method Detailed analysis of SGD noise in linear regression and derivation of a general formula for different types of minima.
result Provides insight into the stability of training neural networks and suggests large learning rates can help generalization.
Exact minibatch MH method improves scalability for large datasets.
problem Inexactness in minibatch MH methods causes inference errors.
method TunaMH proposes an exact minibatch MH method with a tunable batch size.
result TunaMH is asymptotically optimal in terms of batch size.
Minibatch SGD outperforms Local SGD in heterogeneous distributed learning.
problem Optimizing a combined convex objective with stochastic gradient estimates from different machines.
method Analysis of Minibatch SGD and Local SGD in a heterogeneous distributed setting.
result Minibatch SGD dominates Local SGD in the heterogeneous distributed setting.
Gibbs sampling is a Markov chain Monte Carlo method that is often used for learning and inference on graphical models. Minibatching, in which a small random subset of the graph is used at each iteration, can help make Gibbs sampling scale to large graphical models by reducing its computational cost. In this paper, we p…
We study local SGD (also known as parallel SGD and federated averaging), a natural and frequently used stochastic distributed optimization method. Its theoretical foundations are currently lacking and we highlight how all existing error guarantees in the convex setting are dominated by a simple baseline, minibatch SGD.…
New method reduces discrete flow transitions, improving perplexity estimation.
problem Stochasticity in discrete paths makes rectification strategies ineffective.
method Dynamic-optimal-transport-like minimization objective with minibatch strategies.
result 32 times reduction in transitions for same perplexity.
New algorithm samples Bayesian neural networks for improved calibration.
problem Improving calibration of Bayesian neural networks.
method Symmetric Minibatch Splitting-UBU (SMS-UBU) algorithm.
result SMS-UBU provides better calibration performance than standard methods.
This work improves SGD minibatch sampling using determinantal point processes based on orthogonal polynomials.
problem Improving variance reduction in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for large datasets.
method Orthogonal polynomial-based determinantal point processes for sampling minibatches in SGD.
result DPP minibatches lead to a smaller mean square approximation error than uniform minibatches.
New types of machine learning hardware in development and entering the market hold the promise of revolutionizing deep learning in a manner as profound as GPUs. However, existing software frameworks and training algorithms for deep learning have yet to evolve to fully leverage the capability of the new wave of silicon.…
This paper analyzes minibatch optimal transport distances and their applications.
problem Optimal transport distances are complex and impractical for large datasets.
method Extended analysis of minibatch optimal transport distances, focusing on various kernels and debiased functions.
result Minibatch optimal transport distances are unbiased estimators and have statistical and optimisation properties.
New non-homophilous graph datasets and methods for scalable learning.
problem Evaluation of graph learning methods on non-homophilous graphs.
method Introducing LINKX, a simple yet strong method for scalable non-homophilous graph learning.
result LINKX achieves state-of-the-art performance on non-homophilous graphs.
SGD efficiently learns the XOR function with near-optimal sample complexity.
problem Learning the XOR function with a 2-layer neural network.
method Minibatch SGD on a 2-layer neural network with ReLU activations, focusing on signal-finding and signal-heavy phases.
result Achieves population error o(1) with dextpolylog(d) samples. Develops minibatch stochastic proximal gradient for large-scale learning models.
problem Finding optimal predictors with complex regularizers in large-scale learning models.
method Minibatch variants of stochastic proximal gradient algorithm for composite objective functions.
result Minibatch size N after O(Nε1) iterations achieves ε−suboptimality in expected quadratic distance. SGD converges to global minimum for structured non-convex functions.
problem Optimizing non-convex functions using SGD with slow convergence rates.
method Convergence theorems for SGD on structured non-convex functions, including Quasar and PL conditions.
result SGD converges to global minimum for specific non-convex functions under certain conditions.
Unbalanced minibatch Optimal Transport improves domain adaptation performance.
problem Optimal transport distances are computationally expensive for large datasets.
method Use unbalanced minibatch Optimal Transport to estimate distances over subsets of data.
result Unbalanced Optimal Transport leads to better domain adaptation results.
Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) are powerful models for learning representations of attributed graphs. To scale GCNs to large graphs, state-of-the-art methods use various layer sampling techniques to alleviate the "neighbor explosion" problem during minibatch training. We propose GraphSAINT, a graph sampling based …
Although stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a driving force behind the recent success of deep learning, our understanding of its dynamics in a high-dimensional parameter space is limited. In recent years, some researchers have used the stochasticity of minibatch gradients, or the signal-to-noise ratio, to better char…
Anytime MiniBatch speeds up online distributed optimization by handling slow nodes.
problem Mitigating the impact of slow nodes (stragglers) in distributed optimization.
method Proposes an online distributed optimization method that averages minibatch gradients via consensus rounds.
result Prevents stragglers from slowing progress without wasting work.
We propose to tackle the mode collapse problem in generative adversarial networks (GANs) by using multiple discriminators and assigning a different portion of each minibatch, called microbatch, to each discriminator. We gradually change each discriminator's task from distinguishing between real and fake samples to disc…
New DPP kernels improve minibatch efficiency for large datasets.
problem Efficiently generating minibatches from large datasets.
method Wavelet-based DPPs and novel discrete conversion methods.
result Improved minibatch efficiency with low-rank decompositions.
This paper presents a new conditional GAN (named convex relaxing CGAN or crCGAN) to replicate the conventional constrained topology optimization algorithms in an extremely effective and efficient process. The proposed crCGAN consists of a generator and a discriminator, both of which are deep convolutional neural networ…
Noise enhancement improves generalization in training.
problem Improving generalization in training with controlled noise.
method Noise enhancement method to control SGD noise without changing learning rate or minibatch size.
result Noise enhancement improves generalization for real datasets.
CD algorithm achieves near-optimal convergence rate for unnormalized models.
problem Training unnormalized models with high efficiency.
method Non-asymptotic analysis of contrastive divergence algorithm.
result CD can achieve O(n−1/2) convergence rate under regularity assumptions. A new method for distributed optimization reduces communication rounds without minibatches.
problem Efficient training in distributed machine learning with different data distributions.
method A primal-dual method (GA-MSGD) applied to the Lagrangian of distributed optimization.
result Achieves linear convergence in communication rounds for strongly convex objectives.
New method shows stochastic momentum can converge quickly on optimization problems.
problem Improving convergence of stochastic optimization methods.
method Stochastic heavy ball momentum with minibatching.
result Stochastic heavy ball momentum retains fast linear rate on quadratic problems.
DReg boosts large-batch SGD's generalization and convergence.
problem Large-batch SGD struggles with generalization in deep learning.
method DReg replicates a layer to encourage parameter diversity.
result DReg improves generalization and convergence with large-batch SGD.
New minibatching strategy reduces stochastic gradient bias in optimisation.
problem Reducing bias in stochastic gradient descent.
method Symmetric Minibatching Strategy combined with momentum.
result Reduced stochastic gradient bias from O(h2) to O(h4). New algorithms accelerate model-based optimization for stochastic problems.
problem Optimizing model-based stochastic optimization problems efficiently.
method Proposed new model-based algorithms with acceleration and minibatch techniques.
result Non-asymptotic convergence guarantees with linear speedup in minibatch size.
FairBatch optimizes model fairness without changing data or model training.
problem Improving model fairness without altering data or model training.
method Bilevel optimization with an outer optimizer for adaptive batch selection.
result FairBatch improves model fairness without changing data or model training.
Paper proves minibatch SGD for GP inference converges and improves generalization.
problem Theoretical understanding and practical use of SGD for correlated samples in Gaussian process inference.
method Proves minibatch SGD converges to a critical point with rate O(1/K) for K iterations, under certain kernel conditions.
result Minibatch SGD for GP inference improves generalization and reduces computational burden.
Improves sparse reinforcement learning efficiency with OYMB.
problem Sparse rewards hinder reinforcement learning performance.
method Introduces OYMB, a sampler for HER to control minibatch makeup.
result HER combined with OYMB leads to faster real goal completion.
The Lookahead optimizer improves SGD's performance and generalization without restrictive assumptions.
problem Improving the generalization of SGD with Lookahead.
method A rigorous stability and generalization analysis of the Lookahead optimizer with minibatch SGD, leveraging on-average model stability.
result Derives generalization bounds for convex and strongly convex problems without the restrictive Lipschitzness assumption, demonstrating a linear speedup with batch size.
Poor (even random) starting points for learning/training/optimization are common in machine learning. In many settings, the method of Robbins and Monro (online stochastic gradient descent) is known to be optimal for good starting points, but may not be optimal for poor starting points -- indeed, for poor starting point…
Gibbs sampling is the de facto Markov chain Monte Carlo method used for inference and learning on large scale graphical models. For complicated factor graphs with lots of factors, the performance of Gibbs sampling can be limited by the computational cost of executing a single update step of the Markov chain. This cost …
Behavior cloning training instabilities amplified by SGD noise over long horizons.
problem Training instabilities in behavior cloning with deep neural networks.
method Empirical dissection of minibatch SGD updates and their effects on long-horizon rewards.
result Exponential moving average (EMA) of iterates effectively mitigates gradient variance amplification (GVA).
We present novel minibatch stochastic optimization methods for empirical risk minimization problems, the methods efficiently leverage variance reduced first-order and sub-sampled higher-order information to accelerate the convergence speed. For quadratic objectives, we prove improved iteration complexity over state-of-…
This paper studies communication efficiency in federated learning by optimizing the sum-rate-distortion function for indirect multiterminal source coding.
problem Indirect multiterminal source coding in federated learning where edge devices send noisy gradients to the server.
method Analyzes the rate region for the quadratic vector Gaussian CEO problem under unbiased estimator and derives an explicit formula for the sum-rate-distortion function.
result Derives an explicit formula for the sum-rate-distortion function in the special case of identical gradients over edge devices.
New method improves neural network generalization and robustness.
problem Improving neural network generalization and robustness to input perturbations.
method Co-Mixup with supermodular diversity, optimizing data saliency and diversity.
result Achieves state-of-the-art generalization, calibration, and localization results.