arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 28

Linear Independence of Polynomial Compositions and Identifiability of Deep Neural Networks

The paper proposes a conjecture that composing a fixed number of distinct nonconstant polynomials with a generic high‑degree polynomial produces linearly independent polynomials, extending Newman–Slater’s theorem. The authors prove the conjecture for two polynomials and for any number when the degrees are bounded, and they show how these results explain the parameter symmetries of deep fully connected neural networks with generic polynomial activations. In particular, for architectures with layer‑specific activations of increasing degree, the conjecture’s proven cases fully characterize the parameter sets that yield the same end‑to‑end network function, and it also resolves the identifiability of shallow polynomial networks.

By Kathl\'en Kohn, Giovanni Luca Marchetti, Alex Massarenti, Massimiliano Mella