Binary perceptron: efficient algorithms can find solutions in a rare well-connected cluster

Emmanuel Abbe, Shuangping Li, Allan Sly

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

It was recently shown that almost all solutions in the symmetric binary perceptron are isolated, even at low constraint densities, suggesting that finding typical solutions is hard. In contrast, some algorithms have been shown empirically to succeed in finding solutions at low density. This phenomenon has been justified numerically by the existence of subdominant and dense connected regions of solutions, which are accessible by simple learning algorithms. In this paper, we establish formally such a phenomenon for both the symmetric and asymmetric binary perceptrons. We show that at low constraint density (equivalently for overparametrized perceptrons), there exists indeed a subdominant connected cluster of solutions with almost maximal diameter, and that an efficient multiscale majority algorithm can find solutions in such a cluster with high probability, settling in particular an open problem posed by Perkins-Xu in STOC'21. In addition, even close to the critical threshold, we show that there exist clusters of linear diameter for the symmetric perceptron, as well as for the asymmetric perceptron under additional assumptions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSTOC 2022 - Proceedings of the 54th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing
EditorsStefano Leonardi, Anupam Gupta
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages860-873
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9781450392648
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 6 2022
Event54th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 2022 - Rome, Italy
Duration: Jun 20 2022Jun 24 2022

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing
ISSN (Print)0737-8017

Conference

Conference54th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 2022
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityRome
Period6/20/226/24/22

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software

Keywords

  • binary perceptron
  • efficient algorithm
  • neural networks
  • perceptron model
  • solution space

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Binary perceptron: efficient algorithms can find solutions in a rare well-connected cluster'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this