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arXiv:1801.07172 · Physical review. E

Scale-invariant feature extraction of neural network and renormalization group flow

Satoshi Iso, Shotaro Shiba, Sumito Yokoo

Published May 8, 2018• 75 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Theoretical understanding of how a deep neural network (DNN) extracts features from input images is still unclear, but it is widely believed that the extraction is performed hierarchically through a process of coarse graining. It reminds us of the basic renormalization group (RG) concept in statistical physics. In order to explore possible relations between DNN and RG, we use the restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) applied to an Ising model and construct a flow of model parameters (in particular, temperature) generated by the RBM. We show that the unsupervised RBM trained by spin configurations at various temperatures from T=0 to T=6 generates a flow along which the temperature approaches the critical value T_{c}=2.27. This behavior is the opposite of the typical RG flow of the Ising model. By analyzing various properties of the weight matrices of the trained RBM, we discuss why it flows towards T_{c} and how the RBM learns to extract features of spin configurations.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.97.053304

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Theoretical understanding of how a deep neural network (DNN) extracts features from input images is still unclear, but it is widely believed that the extraction is performed hierarchically through a process of coarse graining. It reminds us of the basic renormalization group (RG) concept in statistical physics. In order to explore possible relations between DNN and RG, we use the restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) applied to an Ising model and construct a flow of model parameters (in particular, temperature) generated by the RBM. We show that the unsupervised RBM trained by spin configurations at various temperatures from T=0 to T=6 generates a flow along which the temperature approaches the critical value T_{c}=2.27. This behavior is the opposite of the typical RG flow of the Ising model. By analyzing various properties of the weight matrices of the trained RBM, we discuss why it flows towards T_{c} and how the RBM learns to extract features of spin configurations.
Deep Neural Network (DNN) has been very successful.Especially, unsupervised DNN can extract the features of complicated dataset without any prior knowledge.However, theoretical understanding of how it extracts the features and what it extracts as the features is not clear.We investigate these questions from the theoretical physics point of view by using the Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) and the Autoencoder (AE) trained by spin configurations of the Ising model.In order to explore the features RBM and AE extract, we train them by spin configurations of the 2-dimensional Ising model and construct a flow of its parameters (in particular temperature) generated by the trained RBM and AE.This flow is motivated by the renormalization group flow of statistical model.It is thought that this flow emphasizes the "relevant" features the unsupervised networks learn, and eliminate "irrelevant" information from the dataset.We show that the RBM trained by spin configurations at various temperatures generates a flow on which the temperature approaches the critical temperature T c ≃ 2.27 if the number of visible units is less than hidden units.Unlike the RBM case, the temperature of the fixed points of AE trained sufficiently is lower than the critical temperature if AE is sufficiently trained (5000 epochs).On the other hand, if the learning epochs are 1000, the fixed point temperature monotonically increase with the number of hidden units.We also analyze the weight matrices by singular value decomposition in order to read out the information RBM and AE learn.4 Autoencoder 4.1 Setup . . . . . .
Although there has been a rapid development of practical applications, theoretical explanations of deep learning are in their infancy. Deep learning performs a sophisticated coarse graining. Since coarse graining is a key ingredient of the renormalization group (RG), RG may provide a useful theoretical framework directly relevant to deep learning. In this study we pursue this possibility. A statistical mechanics model for a magnet, the Ising model, is used to train an unsupervised restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM). The patterns generated by the trained RBM are compared to the configurations generated through an RG treatment of the Ising model. Although we are motivated by the connection between deep learning and RG flow, in this study we focus mainly on comparing a single layer of a deep network to a single step in the RG flow. We argue that correlation functions between hidden and visible neurons are capable of diagnosing RG-like coarse graining. Numerical experiments show the presence of RG-like patterns in correlators computed using the trained RBMs. The observables we consider are also able to exhibit important differences between RG and deep learning.
We explore alternative experimental setups for the iterative sampling (flow) from Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBM) mapped on the temperature space of square lattice Ising models by a neural network thermometer. This framework has been introduced to explore connections between RBM-based deep neural networks and the Renormalization Group (RG). It has been found that, under certain conditions, the flow of an RBM trained with Ising spin configurations approaches in the temperature space a value around the critical one: $ k_B T_c / J \approx 2.269$. In this paper we consider datasets with no information about model topology to argue that a neural network thermometer is not an accurate way to detect whether the RBM has learned scale invariance or not.
Even though deep learning has proved to be very powerful as the core method of machine learning, theoretical understanding behind its success is still unclear. It is been pointed out in recent years that the behaviour of deep neural networks is reminiscent of a fundamental framework in statistical physics: the renormalization group (RG). Motivated by this analogy, we develop an analytical method of directly obtaining the trained weights W resulting from a training set of 1D-Ising samples with coupling J and temperature T. The found relation W(J) drives a flow that takes 1D-Ising configurations at non-zero temperature to the critical point at T = 0. This behaviour is opposite to what a typical RG-flow dictates.
The renormalization group (RG) is an essential technique in statistical physics and quantum field theory, which considers scale-invariant properties of physical theories and how these theories' parameters change with scaling. Deep learning is a powerful computational technique that uses multi-layered neural networks to solve a myriad of complicated problems. Previous research suggests the possibility that unsupervised deep learning may be a form of RG flow, by being a layer-by-layer coarse graining of the original data. We examined this connection on a more rigorous basis for the simple example of Kadanoff block renormalization of the 2D nearest-neighbor Ising model, with our deep learning accomplished via Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs). We developed extensive renormalization techniques for the 1D and 2D Ising model to provide a baseline for comparison. For the 1D Ising model, we successfully used Adam optimization on a correlation length loss function to learn the group flow, yielding results consistent with the analytical model for infinite N. For the 2D Ising model, we successfully generated Ising model samples using the Wolff algorithm, and performed the group flow using a quasi-deterministic method, validating these results by calculating the critical exponent ν. We then examined RBM learning of the Ising model layer by layer, finding a blocking structure in the learning that is qualitatively similar to RG. Lastly, we directly compared the weights of each layer from the learning to Ising spin renormalization, but found quantitative inconsistencies for the simple case of nearest-neighbor Ising models.
A theory explaining how deep learning works is yet to be developed. Previous work suggests that deep learning performs a coarse graining, similar in spirit to the renormalization group (RG). This idea has been explored in the setting of a local (nearest-neighbor interactions) Ising spin lattice. We extend the discussion to the setting of a long-range spin lattice. Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations determine both the critical temperature and scaling dimensions of the system. The model is used to train both a single restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) network, as well as a stacked RBM network. Following earlier Ising model studies, the trained weights of a single-layer RBM network define a flow of lattice models. In contrast to results for nearest-neighbor Ising, the RBM flow for the long-ranged model does not converge to the correct values for the spin and energy scaling dimension. Further, correlation functions between visible and hidden nodes exhibit key differences between the stacked RBM and RG flows. The stacked RBM flow appears to move toward low temperatures, whereas the RG flow moves toward high temperature. This again differs from results obtained for nearest-neighbor Ising.