Adam比SGD更少偏向简单解,能学出更复杂的决策边界。
The Rich and the Simple: On the Implicit Bias of Adam and SGD
- 通过分析梯度,发现Adam比SGD更少受简单性偏见影响。
- 在高斯数据上,Adam的非线性边界接近贝叶斯最优,准确率更高。
- 尤其在存在虚假相关性的数据集上,Adam泛化能力更强。
Adam是深度学习中广泛应用的优化算法,但其隐式偏差与标准一阶方法(如随机梯度下降,SGD)的差异仍不清晰。实践中,用SGD训练的神经网络表现出对简单解的偏好。本文研究两层ReLU神经网络在高斯数据上的二分类任务时发现,SGD呈现简单性偏差,产生次优边缘的线性决策边界;而Adam则生成更丰富多样的特征,形成更接近贝叶斯最优预测器的非线性边界,且在分布内及特定分布偏移下测试准确率更高。理论分析基于种群梯度,进一步通过大量实验证明:在存在虚假相关性的多种数据集上,由于SGD易受简单性偏差影响,泛化性能差,而Adam表现更优。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Adam is the de facto optimization algorithm for several deep learning applications, but an understanding of its implicit bias and how it differs from other algorithms, particularly standard first-order methods such as (stochastic) gradient descent (GD), remains limited. In practice, neural networks (NNs) trained with SGD are known to exhibit simplicity bias -- a tendency to find simple solutions. In contrast, we show that Adam is more resistant to such simplicity bias. First, we investigate the differences in the implicit biases of Adam and GD when training two-layer ReLU NNs on a binary classification task with Gaussian data. We find that GD exhibits a simplicity bias, resulting in a linear decision boundary with a suboptimal margin, whereas Adam leads to much richer and more diverse features, producing a nonlinear boundary that is closer to the Bayes' optimal predictor. This richer decision boundary also allows Adam to achieve higher test accuracy both in-distribution and under certain distribution shifts. We theoretically prove these results by analyzing the population gradients. Next, to corroborate our theoretical findings, we present extensive empirical results showing that this property of Adam leads to superior generalization across various datasets with spurious correlations where NNs trained with SGD are known to show simplicity bias and do not generalize well under certain distributional shifts.
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