Visual Analysis of the Impact of Neural Network Hyper-Parameters

Abstract
We present an analysis of the impact of hyper-parameters for an ensemble of neural networks using tailored visualization techniques to understand the complicated relationship between hyper-parameters and model performance. The high-dimensional error surface spanned by the wide range of hyper-parameters used to specify and optimize neural networks is difficult to characterize - it is non-convex and discontinuous, and there could be complex local dependencies between hyper-parameters. To explore these dependencies, we make use of a large number of sampled relations between hyper-parameters and end performance, retrieved from thousands of individually trained convolutional neural network classifiers. We use a structured selection of visualization techniques to analyze the impact of different combinations of hyper-parameters. The results reveal how complicated dependencies between hyper-parameters influence the end performance, demonstrating how the complete picture painted by considering a large number of trainings simultaneously can aid in understanding the impact of hyper-parameter combinations.
Description

        
@inproceedings{
10.2312:mlvis.20201101
, booktitle = {
Machine Learning Methods in Visualisation for Big Data
}, editor = {
Archambault, Daniel and Nabney, Ian and Peltonen, Jaakko
}, title = {{
Visual Analysis of the Impact of Neural Network Hyper-Parameters
}}, author = {
Jönsson, Daniel
and
Eilertsen, Gabriel
and
Shi, Hezi
and
Zheng, Jianmin
and
Ynnerman, Anders
and
Unger, Jonas
}, year = {
2020
}, publisher = {
The Eurographics Association
}, ISBN = {
978-3-03868-113-7
}, DOI = {
10.2312/mlvis.20201101
} }
Citation