21,440 research outputs found
Normalization Techniques for Sequential and Graphical Data
Normalization methods have proven to be an invaluable tool in the training of deep neural networks. In particular, Layer and Batch Normalization are commonly used to mitigate the risks of exploding and vanishing gradients. This work presents two methods which are related to these normalization techniques. The first method is Batch Normalized Preconditioning (BNP) for recurrent neural networks (RNN) and graph convolutional networks (GCN). BNP has been suggested as a technique for Fully Connected and Convolutional networks for achieving similar performance benefits to Batch Normalization by controlling the condition number of the Hessian through preconditioning on the gradients. We extend this work by applying it to Recurrent Neural Networks and Graph Convolutional Networks, two architectures which are prone to high computational costs and therefore benefit from the training acceleration provided by BNP. The second method is Assorted-Time Normalization (ATN). ATN is a normalization technique designed for use in sequential problems. It combines information from the hidden layers of the model with temporal data across the sequence dimension, which remedies a weakness of Layer Normalization in these applications
Constraining Implicit Space with Minimum Description Length: An Unsupervised Attention Mechanism across Neural Network Layers
Inspired by the adaptation phenomenon of neuronal firing, we propose the
regularity normalization (RN) as an unsupervised attention mechanism (UAM)
which computes the statistical regularity in the implicit space of neural
networks under the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle. Treating the
neural network optimization process as a partially observable model selection
problem, UAM constrains the implicit space by a normalization factor, the
universal code length. We compute this universal code incrementally across
neural network layers and demonstrated the flexibility to include data priors
such as top-down attention and other oracle information. Empirically, our
approach outperforms existing normalization methods in tackling limited,
imbalanced and non-stationary input distribution in image classification,
classic control, procedurally-generated reinforcement learning, generative
modeling, handwriting generation and question answering tasks with various
neural network architectures. Lastly, UAM tracks dependency and critical
learning stages across layers and recurrent time steps of deep networks
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