arXiv Machine Learning By Gireeja Ranade, Anant Sahai

The Fourth Quadrant: A Stylized View of Benign Misfitting

Read the original on arXiv Machine Learning →

arXiv:2608. 01032v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Training error is what we can observe on a training set; test error is the quantity we actually care about.

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arXiv Statistics ML
3d ago

Grokking through the Lens of Minimum-Norm Interpolation

The paper develops a statistical theory for minimum‑norm interpolation in high‑dimensional regression, showing how regularization geometry and signal sparsity affect generalization. It identifies regimes where sparsity‑promoting regularizers yield exact interpolation that is far more accurate than approximate fitting, and proves a zero–one generalization law for strongly overparameterized noiseless problems. The authors also characterize training and generalization errors along ρ‑regularization paths when feature dimension and sample size are proportional, demonstrating that generalization improves with more sparsity‑promoting norms and sparser targets, and that small changes in regularization strength can cause large shifts in generalization. whyItMatters":"The work provides a quantitative understanding of delayed generalization (grokking) and reveals a statistical instability in minimum‑norm interpolation, offering insights that could guide the design of regularizers for better generalization in overparameterized models."

By Gil Kur, Ileana Rugina, Cl\'ementine Carla Juliette Domin\'e, Marco Mondelli
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 23

Double Descent and Malign Overfitting in Diffusion Models

The paper investigates why diffusion models, unlike typical deep learning models, exhibit catastrophic overfitting when overparameterized. Through experiments on U‑Nets trained on CelebA and a random‑features theoretical analysis, it shows that the interpolation peak occurs at a model size proportional to the product of training samples and noise realizations, but the test loss starts to rise already at the number of samples, leading to memorization of the empirical score. Regularization techniques such as ridge penalties or early stopping can still make large models outperform smaller, unregularized ones.

By Rapha\"el Urfin, Tony Bonnaire, Giulio Biroli, Marc M\'ezard