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Bayesian Deep Learning and a Probabilistic Perspective of Generalization (arxiv.org)
2 points by blopeur on Feb 21, 2020 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Instead of trusting one set of network weights, this approach averages predictions across solutions the data allows, using ensembles plus averaging within each solution's neighborhood. It improved accuracy and calibration, and removed the dip where medium models do worse, so larger models kept improving.

Abstract

The key distinguishing property of a Bayesian approach is marginalization, rather than using a single setting of weights. Bayesian marginalization can particularly improve the accuracy and calibration of modern deep neural networks, which are typically underspecified by the data, and can represent many compelling but different solutions. We show that deep ensembles provide an effective mechanism for approximate Bayesian marginalization, and propose a related approach that further improves the predictive distribution by marginalizing within basins of attraction, without significant overhead. We also investigate the prior over functions implied by a vague distribution over neural network weights, explaining the generalization properties of such models from a probabilistic perspective. From this perspective, we explain results that have been presented as mysterious and distinct to neural network generalization, such as the ability to fit images with random labels, and show that these results can be reproduced with Gaussian processes. We also show that Bayesian model averaging alleviates double descent, resulting in monotonic performance improvements with increased flexibility. Finally, we provide a Bayesian perspective on tempering for calibrating predictive distributions.

Andrew Gordon Wilson, Pavel Izmailov
arXiv:2002.08791 · cs.LG, stat.ML · submitted Feb 20, 2020 · updated Mar 30, 2022
abstract · pdf · html · 31 pages, 19 figures

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