arXiv:2608. 06597v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: A scientific theory of deep learning, comprising learning dynamics and statistical properties of learned models, is rapidly gaining attention.
By Bj\"orn Ladewig, Ibrahim Talha Ersoy, Karoline Wiesner
The study investigates the delayed transition from memorization to generalization—known as grokking—in two‑hidden‑layer MLPs trained on modular arithmetic. By exploring 384 hyperparameter configurations, the authors derive a power‑law scaling relation for the onset time of generalization, showing that data complexity dominates over model capacity. A clear phase boundary at weight decay around 1.0 separates grokking from non‑grokking regimes, and weight norm trajectories indicate implicit regularization during the transition.
By Anish Kataria
The paper presents a spectral theory explaining the phenomenon of grokking, where an initial fit to training data is followed by a delayed improvement in generalization. It shows that for homogeneous networks trained with squared loss and L₂ weight decay, residuals after memorization influence the neural tangent kernel (NTK) dynamics, leading to a transition from lazy to rich learning. The theory predicts that grokking timescales depend on the product of learning rate and weight decay, and that stronger decay can halt fitting, with empirical validation on modular addition tasks using MLPs and Transformers.
By Lenz Pracher, Pascal de Jong, Oskar Lieshaus, Alan Jeffares, Steffen Rulands
arXiv:2608. 01833v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Grokking is a striking phenomenon in neural network training, where a model can undergo a prolonged period of pure memorization before abrupt generalization.
By Lai Shun Chan, Xiaotian Zhang, Yue Shang, Ge Zhang, Entao Yang
arXiv:2606. 04476v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this paper, we study the gradient descent dynamics for jointly training both layers of a one-hidden-layer ReLU network to fit a linear target function.
By Berk Tinaz, Changzhi Xie, Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
arXiv:2606. 30512v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Why overparameterised deep networks generalise so remarkably well remains one of the most stubborn open questions in machine learning theory.
By Srinivasa Rao P., Vangmayi P Reddy