Title
Optimal Regularization Can Mitigate Double Descent
Abstract
Recent empirical and theoretical studies have shown that many learning algorithms -- from linear regression to neural networks -- can have test performance that is non-monotonic in quantities such the sample size and model size. This striking phenomenon, often referred to as \"double descent\", has raised questions of if we need to re-think our current understanding of generalization. In this work, we study whether the double-descent phenomenon can be avoided by using optimal regularization. Theoretically, we prove that for certain linear regression models with isotropic data distribution, optimally-tuned l2 regularization achieves monotonic test performance as we grow either the sample size or the model size. We also demonstrate empirically that optimally-tuned l2 regularization can mitigate double descent for more general models, including neural networks. Our results suggest that it may also be informative to study the test risk scalings of various algorithms in the context of appropriately tuned regularization.
Year
Venue
DocType
2021
ICLR
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Preetum Nakkiran102.37
Venkat Prayaag200.34
Sham Kakade34365282.77
Tengyu Ma459641.23