用数学上的分部单位构造可解释分类模型,直接输出概率且无需Softmax
Partition of Unity Neural Networks for Interpretable Classification with Explicit Class Regions
- 用可学习的连续函数替代类别指示函数,构造和为1的概率输出
- 无需Softmax层即可保证概率非负且和为1,且可追踪每类概率生成路径
- 支持几何先验信息,匹配类别形状时参数更少、精度相当
我们提出基于分部单位理论的多分类神经网络(PUNNs)。其核心思想是将理想类别区域的特征函数替换为可学习的连续函数 $ h_1,\ldots,h_C: \mathcal X \to [0,1] $,这些函数之和恒为1,其值可直接解释为类别概率。通过输入相关的递归门控结构生成这些函数,确保概率非负且和为1,无需单独的归一化层(如Softmax)。每个概率可显式分解为门控值的乘积,门控路径提供可解释的决策过程。框架支持单类使用多个分区函数,并兼容神经网络与几何启发的门控实现。理论上证明PUNNs在紧子集上稠密于连续概率映射空间,保持对连续概率分类器的通用逼近能力。实验在合成数据、MNIST和CIFAR-100上展示了学习到的分区结构、类别排序影响及多分区表示效果。还设计了融合几何信息的形状感知门控,在类别区域形状匹配时,显著减少参数量并保持相近精度。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
We introduce \emph{Partition of Unity Neural Networks} (PUNNs), a neural-network architecture for multiclass classification based on the classical mathematical notion of a partition of unity. The starting point is the observation that the characteristic functions of ideal class regions form a partition of unity. PUNNs replace these discontinuous indicators by learned continuous functions \[ h_1,\ldots,h_C:\mathcal X\to[0,1] \] whose sum is identically one and whose values are interpreted directly as class probabilities. The partition functions are generated through a recursive family of input-dependent gates. This construction guarantees nonnegative class probabilities summing to one without a separate normalization layer such as softmax, while providing an explicit ordered factorization of each probability in terms of the gate values. The resulting gate trace gives an interpretable representation of how individual class probabilities are formed. The framework also allows multiple partition functions to represent a single class and admits both neural-network and geometry-informed realizations of the gates. We prove that PUNNs are dense in the space of continuous probability maps from compact subsets of $\mathbb R^d$ into the probability simplex. Thus, the recursive partition-of-unity structure retains universal approximation of continuous probabilistic classifiers, including maps whose components may vanish. Numerical experiments on synthetic datasets, MNIST, and CIFAR-100 illustrate the learned partitions, the effect of class ordering, and the use of multiple partition components per class. We also develop shape-informed gates that incorporate geometric information directly; when the chosen geometry is well matched to the class regions, these models achieve comparable accuracy with substantially fewer trainable parameters.
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