This paper presents a general methodology for deriving information-theoretic generalization bounds for learning algorithms. The main technical tool is a probabilistic decorrelation lemma based on a change of measure and a relaxation of Young's inequality in $L_{\psi_p}$ Orlicz spaces. Using the decorrelation lemma in combination with other techniques, such as symmetrization, couplings, and chaining in the space of probability measures, we obtain new upper bounds on the generalization error, both in expectation and in high probability, and recover as special cases many of the existing generalization bounds, including the ones based on mutual information, conditional mutual information, stochastic chaining, and PAC-Bayes inequalities. In addition, the Fernique-Talagrand upper bound on the expected supremum of a subgaussian process emerges as a special case.
Graph neural networks (GNNs) have become increasingly popular for classification tasks on graph-structured data. Yet, the interplay between graph topology and feature evolution in GNNs is not well understood. In this paper, we focus on node-wise classification, illustrated with community detection on stochastic block model graphs, and explore the feature evolution through the lens of the "Neural Collapse" (NC) phenomenon. When training instance-wise deep classifiers (e.g. for image classification) beyond the zero training error point, NC demonstrates a reduction in the deepest features' within-class variability and an increased alignment of their class means to certain symmetric structures. We start with an empirical study that shows that a decrease in within-class variability is also prevalent in the node-wise classification setting, however, not to the extent observed in the instance-wise case. Then, we theoretically study this distinction. Specifically, we show that even an "optimistic" mathematical model requires that the graphs obey a strict structural condition in order to possess a minimizer with exact collapse. Interestingly, this condition is viable also for heterophilic graphs and relates to recent empirical studies on settings with improved GNNs' generalization. Furthermore, by studying the gradient dynamics of the theoretical model, we provide reasoning for the partial collapse observed empirically. Finally, we present a study on the evolution of within- and between-class feature variability across layers of a well-trained GNN and contrast the behavior with spectral methods.
Discrete chemical reaction networks formalize the interactions of molecular species in a well-mixed solution as stochastic events. Given their basic mathematical and physical role, the computational power of chemical reaction networks has been widely studied in the molecular programming and distributed computing communities. While for Turing-universal systems there is a universal measure of optimal information encoding based on Kolmogorov complexity, chemical reaction networks are not Turing universal unless error and unbounded molecular counts are permitted. Nonetheless, here we show that the optimal number of reactions to generate a specific count $x \in \mathbb{N}$ with probability $1$ is asymptotically equal to a ``space-aware'' version of the Kolmogorov complexity of $x$, defined as $\mathrm{\widetilde{K}s}(x) = \min_p\left\{\lvert p \rvert / \log \lvert p \rvert + \log(\texttt{space}(\mathcal{U}(p))) : \mathcal{U}(p) = x \right\}$, where $p$ is a program for universal Turing machine $\mathcal{U}$. This version of Kolmogorov complexity incorporates not just the length of the shortest program for generating $x$, but also the space usage of that program. Probability $1$ computation is captured by the standard notion of stable computation from distributed computing, but we limit our consideration to chemical reaction networks obeying a stronger constraint: they ``know when they are done'' in the sense that they produce a special species to indicate completion. As part of our results, we develop a module for encoding and unpacking any $b$ bits of information via $O(b/\log{b})$ reactions, which is information-theoretically optimal for incompressible information. Our work provides one answer to the question of how succinctly chemical self-organization can be encoded -- in the sense of generating precise molecular counts of species as the desired state.
Deep artificial neural networks achieve surprising generalization abilities that remain poorly understood. In this paper, we present a new approach to analyzing generalization for deep feed-forward ReLU networks that takes advantage of the degree of sparsity that is achieved in the hidden layer activations. By developing a framework that accounts for this reduced effective model size for each input sample, we are able to show fundamental trade-offs between sparsity and generalization. Importantly, our results make no strong assumptions about the degree of sparsity achieved by the model, and it improves over recent norm-based approaches. We illustrate our results numerically, demonstrating non-vacuous bounds when coupled with data-dependent priors in specific settings, even in over-parametrized models.
In this work we connect two notions: That of the nonparametric mode of a probability measure, defined by asymptotic small ball probabilities, and that of the Onsager-Machlup functional, a generalized density also defined via asymptotic small ball probabilities. We show that in a separable Hilbert space setting and under mild conditions on the likelihood, modes of a Bayesian posterior distribution based upon a Gaussian prior exist and agree with the minimizers of its Onsager-Machlup functional and thus also with weak posterior modes. We apply this result to inverse problems and derive conditions on the forward mapping under which this variational characterization of posterior modes holds. Our results show rigorously that in the limit case of infinite-dimensional data corrupted by additive Gaussian or Laplacian noise, nonparametric maximum a posteriori estimation is equivalent to Tikhonov-Phillips regularization. In comparison with the work of Dashti, Law, Stuart, and Voss (2013), the assumptions on the likelihood are relaxed so that they cover in particular the important case of white Gaussian process noise. We illustrate our results by applying them to a severely ill-posed linear problem with Laplacian noise, where we express the maximum a posteriori estimator analytically and study its rate of convergence in the small noise limit.
We develop a flexible stochastic approximation framework for analyzing the long-run behavior of learning in games (both continuous and finite). The proposed analysis template incorporates a wide array of popular learning algorithms, including gradient-based methods, the exponential/multiplicative weights algorithm for learning in finite games, optimistic and bandit variants of the above, etc. In addition to providing an integrated view of these algorithms, our framework further allows us to obtain several new convergence results, both asymptotic and in finite time, in both continuous and finite games. Specifically, we provide a range of criteria for identifying classes of Nash equilibria and sets of action profiles that are attracting with high probability, and we also introduce the notion of coherence, a game-theoretic property that includes strict and sharp equilibria, and which leads to convergence in finite time. Importantly, our analysis applies to both oracle-based and bandit, payoff-based methods - that is, when players only observe their realized payoffs.
We study lower bounds for the problem of approximating a one dimensional distribution given (noisy) measurements of its moments. We show that there are distributions on $[-1,1]$ that cannot be approximated to accuracy $\epsilon$ in Wasserstein-1 distance even if we know \emph{all} of their moments to multiplicative accuracy $(1\pm2^{-\Omega(1/\epsilon)})$; this result matches an upper bound of Kong and Valiant [Annals of Statistics, 2017]. To obtain our result, we provide a hard instance involving distributions induced by the eigenvalue spectra of carefully constructed graph adjacency matrices. Efficiently approximating such spectra in Wasserstein-1 distance is a well-studied algorithmic problem, and a recent result of Cohen-Steiner et al. [KDD 2018] gives a method based on accurately approximating spectral moments using $2^{O(1/\epsilon)}$ random walks initiated at uniformly random nodes in the graph. As a strengthening of our main result, we show that improving the dependence on $1/\epsilon$ in this result would require a new algorithmic approach. Specifically, no algorithm can compute an $\epsilon$-accurate approximation to the spectrum of a normalized graph adjacency matrix with constant probability, even when given the transcript of $2^{\Omega(1/\epsilon)}$ random walks of length $2^{\Omega(1/\epsilon)}$ started at random nodes.
Consistent weighted least square estimators are proposed for a wide class of nonparametric regression models with random regression function, where this real-valued random function of $k$ arguments is assumed to be continuous with probability 1. We obtain explicit upper bounds for the rate of uniform convergence in probability of the new estimators to the unobservable random regression function for both fixed or random designs. In contrast to the predecessors' results, the bounds for the convergence are insensitive to the correlation structure of the $k$-variate design points. As an application, we study the problem of estimating the mean and covariance functions of random fields with additive noise under dense data conditions. The theoretical results of the study are illustrated by simulation examples which show that the new estimators are more accurate in some cases than the Nadaraya--Watson ones. An example of processing real data on earthquakes in Japan in 2012--2021 is included.
Invariant risk minimization (IRM) has recently emerged as a promising alternative for domain generalization. Nevertheless, the loss function is difficult to optimize for nonlinear classifiers and the original optimization objective could fail when pseudo-invariant features and geometric skews exist. Inspired by IRM, in this paper we propose a novel formulation for domain generalization, dubbed invariant information bottleneck (IIB). IIB aims at minimizing invariant risks for nonlinear classifiers and simultaneously mitigating the impact of pseudo-invariant features and geometric skews. Specifically, we first present a novel formulation for invariant causal prediction via mutual information. Then we adopt the variational formulation of the mutual information to develop a tractable loss function for nonlinear classifiers. To overcome the failure modes of IRM, we propose to minimize the mutual information between the inputs and the corresponding representations. IIB significantly outperforms IRM on synthetic datasets, where the pseudo-invariant features and geometric skews occur, showing the effectiveness of proposed formulation in overcoming failure modes of IRM. Furthermore, experiments on DomainBed show that IIB outperforms $13$ baselines by $0.9\%$ on average across $7$ real datasets.
We derive information-theoretic generalization bounds for supervised learning algorithms based on the information contained in predictions rather than in the output of the training algorithm. These bounds improve over the existing information-theoretic bounds, are applicable to a wider range of algorithms, and solve two key challenges: (a) they give meaningful results for deterministic algorithms and (b) they are significantly easier to estimate. We show experimentally that the proposed bounds closely follow the generalization gap in practical scenarios for deep learning.
Deep learning is usually described as an experiment-driven field under continuous criticizes of lacking theoretical foundations. This problem has been partially fixed by a large volume of literature which has so far not been well organized. This paper reviews and organizes the recent advances in deep learning theory. The literature is categorized in six groups: (1) complexity and capacity-based approaches for analyzing the generalizability of deep learning; (2) stochastic differential equations and their dynamic systems for modelling stochastic gradient descent and its variants, which characterize the optimization and generalization of deep learning, partially inspired by Bayesian inference; (3) the geometrical structures of the loss landscape that drives the trajectories of the dynamic systems; (4) the roles of over-parameterization of deep neural networks from both positive and negative perspectives; (5) theoretical foundations of several special structures in network architectures; and (6) the increasingly intensive concerns in ethics and security and their relationships with generalizability.