Neural networks memorize exceptions, leading to poor generalization.
problem Memorization of exceptions hinders neural network generalization.
method Formalized memorization-generalization interplay, proposed MAT to shift logits.
result MAT improves generalization by learning robust patterns invariant across distributions.
Study identifies and analyzes spurious correlations in data-driven models.
problem Spurious correlations in data-driven models are unreliable and hard to detect.
method Collect and analyze synthetic datasets generated from causal graphs to investigate spurious correlations.
result Patterns connecting spurious correlation hypotheses and model design choices were observed.
This research examines rare spurious correlations in neural networks and their impact on accuracy and privacy.
problem Rare spurious correlations in neural networks and their privacy risks.
method Introducing spurious patterns correlated with a fixed class to a few training examples, analyzing ℓ2 regularization and Gaussian noise. result Rare spurious correlations can significantly impact neural network accuracy and privacy, and specific mitigation methods can be effective.
Despite alarm over the reliance of machine learning systems on so-called spurious patterns, the term lacks coherent meaning in standard statistical frameworks. However, the language of causality offers clarity: spurious associations are due to confounding (e.g., a common cause), but not direct or indirect causal effect…
AFR simplifies reducing reliance on spurious features, improving model performance.
problem Reducing reliance on spurious features for out-of-distribution generalization.
method Automatic Feature Reweighting (AFR) updates the model with a weighted loss.
result AFR improves model performance on benchmarks with minimal compute.
DORA analyzes deep neural networks' internal representations to detect spurious correlations.
problem Detecting spurious correlations in deep neural networks' internal representations.
method DORA uses Extreme-Activation (EA) distance measure to assess representation similarities.
result Identifies internal representations capable of detecting spurious correlations.
Deep models learn spurious features correlated with target, but can still perform well.
problem Spurious correlations in feature learning.
method Empirical risk minimization and specialized group robustness training.
result Feature representations learned by ERM are competitive with specialized methods.
GRASP removes spurious correlations in fine-tuned models, improving task performance and reducing bias.
problem Fine-tuned models can latch onto spurious correlations, leading to bias and reduced generalization.
method GRASP identifies and removes spurious correlations from model weights without removing latent factors.
result GRASP significantly reduces bias and improves task performance in various fine-tuning tasks.
Max-Pooling operations are a core component of deep learning architectures. In particular, they are part of most convolutional architectures used in machine vision, since pooling is a natural approach to pattern detection problems. However, these architectures are not well understood from a theoretical perspective. For…
Spatially-aware metrics improve uncertainty evaluation in segmentation.
problem Uncertainty evaluation metrics treat voxels independently, ignoring spatial context.
method Proposed three spatially aware metrics incorporating structural and boundary information.
result Improved alignment with clinically important factors and better discrimination between uncertainty patterns.
Removing spurious features can hurt model accuracy and disproportionately affect different groups.
problem Interference from spurious features in robust model performance across different groups.
method Characterization and analysis of spurious feature removal in noiseless overparameterized linear regression.
result Removal of spurious features can decrease accuracy and disproportionately affect different groups, even in balanced datasets.
SGD quickly learns a spurious XOR feature before the signal feature, revealing learning dynamics.
problem Over-reliance on spurious correlations in neural networks trained by SGD.
method Theoretical analysis of SGD on two-layer ReLU networks trained on XOR data.
result SGD learns the spurious feature first and exponentially fast, dominating the signal feature.
SYNC learns time-aware causal representations to improve model generalization in evolving domains.
problem Spurious correlations and shortcut learning in existing EDG methods hinder model generalization.
method SYNC integrates dynamic causal factors and causal mechanism drifts into a sequential VAE framework.
result SYNC achieves superior temporal generalization performance on synthetic and real-world datasets.
The study improves the perceptron's storage capacity by optimizing variable selection.
problem Distinguishing genuine structure from random correlations in high-dimensional data.
method Replica method from statistical mechanics for optimal variable selection.
result Optimal variable selection can surpass the Cover--Gardner bound for pattern classification.
Researchers use human-in-the-loop to create counterfactually augmented data, improving model performance.
problem Creating ML models less reliant on spurious patterns in NLP datasets.
method A human-in-the-loop process to curate counterfactually augmented data (CAD), prohibiting unnecessary edits.
result Models trained on CAD appear to rely less on semantically irrelevant words and generalize better out of domain.
Mitigates spurious correlations without bias labels.
problem Spurious correlations bias model performance.
method Introduces a novel training objective and debiasing method DPR.
result DPR achieves state-of-the-art performance.
Complex-valued neural networks avoid spurious local minima.
problem Finding spurious local minima in neural networks.
method Proved no spurious local minima for shallow complex neural networks with quadratic activations.
result Complex-valued weights eliminate spurious local minima in neural networks.
CLIP models robustness to spurious features is re-evaluated using a new dataset.
problem Existing robustness tests of CLIP models may not fully reflect their performance on spurious features.
method Crafted a new dataset (CounterAnimal) to reveal CLIP models' reliance on realistic spurious features.
result CLIP models are robust to spurious features learned from their training data, not ImageNet.
Neural model uses deductive database to predict events from past patterns.
problem Difficulty in predicting future events from past patterns when event types are large.
method Temporal deductive database with rules to prove facts from other facts and past events. Neural nets model fact states and probabilities.
result Neural models derived from concise Datalog programs improve prediction by encoding domain knowledge.
Self-training avoids spurious features in domain adaptation.
problem Domain shift with large differences between source and target domains.
method Entropy minimization on unlabeled target data, initialized with a source classifier.
result Entropy minimization avoids using spurious features in large domain shifts.
Algorithm removes spurious concepts from neural network representations without harming task performance.
problem Spurious correlations hinder neural network out-of-distribution generalization.
method Iterative algorithm that identifies two orthogonal subspaces in neural network representation.
result Algorithm outperforms existing methods on computer vision and natural language processing benchmarks.
This paper offers a general and comprehensive definition of the day-of-the-week effect. Using symbolic dynamics, we develop a unique test based on ordinal patterns in order to detect it. This test uncovers the fact that the so-called "day-of-the-week" effect is partly an artifact of the hidden correlation structure of …
Framework isolates causal effects from time series data, improving accuracy under non-stationarity and autocorrelation.
problem Causal inference in non-stationary, autocorrelated time series data.
method Decomposes time series into trend, seasonal, and residual components; performs component-specific causal analysis.
result Framework more accurately recovers ground-truth causal structure than state-of-the-art baselines, especially under strong non-stationarity and temporal autocorrelation.
Current OOD benchmarks overestimate model robustness to spurious correlations.
problem Spurious correlations degrade OOD performance, but benchmarks show the opposite.
method Analyze OOD datasets for spurious correlations and derive conditions for robustness.
result Current OOD benchmarks are misspecified and overestimate model robustness.
Mitigates biases in reward models using variational inference.
problem Spurious correlations in reward models that align large language models with human preferences.
method Formulates data-generating process, identifies non-spurious latent variables, and uses variational inference to recover them.
result Effective mitigation of spurious correlation issues, yielding more robust reward models.
This paper explores loss landscapes of sparse neural networks, finding unique characteristics compared to dense networks.
problem Understanding the loss landscape of sparse neural networks, especially one-hidden-layer networks.
method Analyzes sparse networks with dense and sparse final layers, focusing on linear and non-linear models.
result Sparse networks can have no spurious valleys under certain conditions, but spurious valleys and minima can exist for wide sparse networks.
Riemannian gradient descent escapes some spurious critical points on low-rank matrix manifold.
problem Spurious critical points on the boundary of low-rank matrix manifold.
method Riemannian gradient descent with dynamical low-rank approximation and rescaled gradient flow.
result Riemannian gradient descent escapes some spurious critical points on the boundary of the manifold.
Last layer retraining improves robustness to spurious correlations without high computational costs.
problem Neural networks can rely on spurious features like backgrounds for predictions.
method Simple last layer retraining on large models.
result Last layer retraining matches or outperforms state-of-the-art approaches on spurious correlation benchmarks.
Logit correction improves model performance by correcting spurious correlations.
problem Spurious correlations lead to poor model performance during inference.
method Proposes logit correction (LC) loss to mitigate spurious correlations.
result LC loss outperforms state-of-the-art solutions by 5.5% absolute improvement.
New scoring rule predicts causal relations from data with selection bias.
problem Discovering causal relations from independence constraints under selection bias and confounding.
method Local Y-Structure patterns and a scoring rule for Y-Structures.
result Y-Structure scoring rule successfully predicts causal relations in real-world data.
Develops tools to decompose spurious variations in causal models.
problem Understanding and decomposing spurious variations in causal relationships.
method Formal tools for decomposing spurious effects in Markovian and Semi-Markovian models.
result First results on non-parametric decomposition of spurious effects and sufficient conditions for identification.
Gradient flow in phase retrieval escapes spurious minima with high probability.
problem Understanding gradient-based optimization in high-dimensional non-convex functions.
method Analytical and numerical study of gradient dynamics in phase retrieval.
result Gradient flow avoids spurious minima by drifting along unstable directions.
The paper analyzes how deep models memorize spurious features.
problem Understanding how deep models memorize spurious features in training data.
method Characterizes spurious feature memorization via model stability and feature alignment.
result Memorization of spurious features weakens as generalization capability increases.
Online algorithm detects and removes spurious features for strong generalization.
problem Predictive models learn spurious correlations from incomplete data.
method Online continual learning algorithm that detects and removes spurious features.
result Algorithm converges to solutions with strong generalization.
New method prevents classifiers from relying on spurious correlations.
problem Group invariant learning fails to prevent classifiers from depending on spurious correlations.
method Statistical independence tests to construct groups and reweight samples by group label proportion.
result New method significantly outperforms existing group invariant learning methods in generalizing to spurious correlation shifts.
Learning rate decay (lrDecay) is a \emph{de facto} technique for training modern neural networks. It starts with a large learning rate and then decays it multiple times. It is empirically observed to help both optimization and generalization. Common beliefs in how lrDecay works come from the optimization analysis of (S…
Neural networks provide a rich class of high-dimensional, non-convex optimization problems. Despite their non-convexity, gradient-descent methods often successfully optimize these models. This has motivated a recent spur in research attempting to characterize properties of their loss surface that may explain such succe…
The FastICA algorithm is one of the most popular iterative algorithms in the domain of linear independent component analysis. Despite its success, it is observed that FastICA occasionally yields outcomes that do not correspond to any true solutions (known as demixing vectors) of the ICA problem. These outcomes are comm…
LaCIM avoids spurious correlation by modeling latent causal factors.
problem Avoiding spurious correlation in supervised learning.
method Introducing latent variables for causal prediction and optimizing over latent space.
result Improved interpretability, robustness, and prediction power on OOD scenarios.
Invariant Causal Set Covering Machines avoid spurious associations.
problem Learning algorithms for rule-based models are vulnerable to spurious associations.
method Building on invariant causal prediction, propose Invariant Causal Set Covering Machines for conjunctions/disjunctions of binary-valued rules.
result The method can identify causal parents of a variable of interest in polynomial time.
We show that for any convex differentiable loss, a deep linear network has no spurious local minima as long as it is true for the two layer case. This reduction greatly simplifies the study on the existence of spurious local minima in deep linear networks. When applied to the quadratic loss, our result immediately impl…
Unordered feature sets are a nonstandard data structure that traditional neural networks are incapable of addressing in a principled manner. Providing a concatenation of features in an arbitrary order may lead to the learning of spurious patterns or biases that do not actually exist. Another complication is introduced …
The study identifies spurious correlations in high-dimensional regression and quantifies their impact.
problem Spurious correlations in high-dimensional regression models.
method Statistical characterization of spurious correlations, quantifying their amount via ridge regularization.
result The value of regularization strength that minimizes test loss is in an interval where spurious correlations increase.
When the linear measurements of an instance of low-rank matrix recovery satisfy a restricted isometry property (RIP)---i.e. they are approximately norm-preserving---the problem is known to contain no spurious local minima, so exact recovery is guaranteed. In this paper, we show that moderate RIP is not enough to elimin…
New rationalization method avoids spurious correlations.
problem Spurious correlations in rationalization criteria.
method Invariant rationalization using game theory constraints.
result Rationales generalize better and align with human judgments.
Study on W2S generalization with spurious correlations, proposing remedies.
problem Understanding and improving W2S generalization with spurious correlations.
method Theoretical analysis and algorithmic remedies for W2S fine-tuning.
result W2S always happens with sufficient pseudolabels when group fractions match, but may fail otherwise.
Large learning rates enhance model robustness and compressibility.
problem Achieving robustness and resource-efficiency in machine learning models.
method Identifying and utilizing large learning rates as a facilitator for robustness and compressibility.
result Large learning rates produce desirable representation properties and compare favorably to other methods.
New findings show Bregman proximal algorithms can get stuck near non-stationary points.
problem Bregman proximal algorithms can get stuck near non-stationary points, misleadingly suggesting convergence.
method Analysis of Bregman proximal algorithms and their behavior near non-stationary points.
result Bregman proximal algorithms can get stuck near spurious stationary points, even in convex problems.