Adding noise to an underconstrained neural network model with a small training dataset can have a regularizing effect and reduce overfitting. Keras supports the addition of Gaussian noise via a separate layer called the GaussianNoise layer. This layer can be used to add noise to an existing model. In this tutorial, you will discover how […]
Training a neural network with a small dataset can cause the network to memorize all training examples, in turn leading to poor performance on a holdout dataset. Small datasets may also represent a harder mapping problem for neural networks to learn, given the patchy or sparse sampling of points in the high-dimensional input space. One […]
A problem with training neural networks is in the choice of the number of training epochs to use. Too many epochs can lead to overfitting of the training dataset, whereas too few may result in an underfit model. Early stopping is a method that allows you to specify an arbitrary large number of training epochs […]
A major challenge in training neural networks is how long to train them. Too little training will mean that the model will underfit the train and the test sets. Too much training will mean that the model will overfit the training dataset and have poor performance on the test set. A compromise is to train […]
Dropout regularization is a computationally cheap way to regularize a deep neural network. Dropout works by probabilistically removing, or “dropping out,” inputs to a layer, which may be input variables in the data sample or activations from a previous layer. It has the effect of simulating a large number of networks with very different network […]
Deep learning neural networks are likely to quickly overfit a training dataset with few examples. Ensembles of neural networks with different model configurations are known to reduce overfitting, but require the additional computational expense of training and maintaining multiple models. A single model can be used to simulate having a large number of different network […]
Activity regularization provides an approach to encourage a neural network to learn sparse features or internal representations of raw observations. It is common to seek sparse learned representations in autoencoders, called sparse autoencoders, and in encoder-decoder models, although the approach can also be used generally to reduce overfitting and improve a model’s ability to generalize […]
Deep learning models are capable of automatically learning a rich internal representation from raw input data. This is called feature or representation learning. Better learned representations, in turn, can lead to better insights into the domain, e.g. via visualization of learned features, and to better predictive models that make use of the learned features. A […]
Weight constraints provide an approach to reduce the overfitting of a deep learning neural network model on the training data and improve the performance of the model on new data, such as the holdout test set. There are multiple types of weight constraints, such as maximum and unit vector norms, and some require a hyperparameter […]
Weight regularization methods like weight decay introduce a penalty to the loss function when training a neural network to encourage the network to use small weights. Smaller weights in a neural network can result in a model that is more stable and less likely to overfit the training dataset, in turn having better performance when […]
