MACHINE LEARNING
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## Backprop as Functor: A compositional perspective on supervised learning

Resource type
Authors/contributors
Title
Backprop as Functor: A compositional perspective on supervised learning
Abstract
A supervised learning algorithm searches over a set of functions $A \to B$ parametrised by a space $P$ to find the best approximation to some ideal function $f\colon A \to B$. It does this by taking examples $(a,f(a)) \in A\times B$, and updating the parameter according to some rule. We define a category where these update rules may be composed, and show that gradient descent---with respect to a fixed step size and an error function satisfying a certain property---defines a monoidal functor from a category of parametrised functions to this category of update rules. This provides a structural perspective on backpropagation, as well as a broad generalisation of neural networks.
Publication
arXiv:1711.10455 [cs, math]
Date
2019-05-01
Short Title
Backprop as Functor
Accessed
2019-11-23T14:42:07Z
Library Catalog
Extra
ZSCC: 0000015 arXiv: 1711.10455
Notes
Comment: 13 pages + 4 page appendix
Citation
Fong, B., Spivak, D. I., & Tuyéras, R. (2019). Backprop as Functor: A compositional perspective on supervised learning. ArXiv:1711.10455 [Cs, Math]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1711.10455
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