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Training a neural network

Training a neural network is easy with a simple for loop. While doing your own loop provides great flexibility, you might want sometimes a quick way of training neural networks. StochasticGradient, a simple class which does the job for you is provided as standard.

StochasticGradient

StochasticGradient is a high-level class for training neural networks, using a stochastic gradient algorithm. This class is serializable.

StochasticGradient(module, criterion)

Create a StochasticGradient class, using the given Module and Criterion. The class contains several parameters you might want to set after initialization.

train(dataset)

Train the module and criterion given in the constructor over dataset, using the internal parameters.

StochasticGradient expect as a dataset an object which implements the operator dataset[index] and implements the method dataset:size(). The size() methods returns the number of examples and dataset[i] has to return the i-th example.

An example has to be an object which implements the operator example[field], where field might take the value 1 (input features) or 2 (corresponding label which will be given to the criterion). The input is usually a Tensor (except if you use special kind of gradient modules, like table layers). The label type depends of the criterion. For example, the MSECriterion expects a Tensor, but the ClassNLLCriterion except a integer number (the class).

Such a dataset is easily constructed by using Lua tables, but it could any C object for example, as long as required operators/methods are implemented. See an example.

Parameters

StochasticGradient has several field which have an impact on a call to train().

  • learningRate: This is the learning rate used during training. The update of the parameters will be parameters = parameters - learningRate * parameters_gradient. Default value is 0.01.
  • learningRateDecay: The learning rate decay. If non-zero, the learning rate (note: the field learningRate will not change value) will be computed after each iteration (pass over the dataset) with: current_learning_rate =learningRate / (1 + iteration * learningRateDecay)
  • maxIteration: The maximum number of iteration (passes over the dataset). Default is 25.
  • shuffleIndices: Boolean which says if the examples will be randomly sampled or not. Default is true. If false, the examples will be taken in the order of the dataset.
  • hookExample: A possible hook function which will be called (if non-nil) during training after each example forwarded and backwarded through the network. The function takes (self, example) as parameters. Default is nil.
  • hookIteration: A possible hook function which will be called (if non-nil) during training after a complete pass over the dataset. The function takes (self, iteration) as parameters. Default is nil.

Example of training using StochasticGradient

We show an example here on a classical XOR problem.

Dataset

We first need to create a dataset, following the conventions described in StochasticGradient.

dataset={};
function dataset:size() return 100 end -- 100 examples
for i=1,dataset:size() do 
  local input = torch.randn(2);     -- normally distributed example in 2d
  local output = torch.Tensor(1);
  if input[1]*input[2]>0 then     -- calculate label for XOR function
    output[1] = -1;
  else
    output[1] = 1
  end
  dataset[i] = {input, output}
end

Neural Network

We create a simple neural network with one hidden layer.

require "nn"
mlp = nn.Sequential();  -- make a multi-layer perceptron
inputs = 2; outputs = 1; HUs = 20; -- parameters
mlp:add(nn.Linear(inputs, HUs))
mlp:add(nn.Tanh())
mlp:add(nn.Linear(HUs, outputs))

Training

We choose the Mean Squared Error criterion and train the beast.

criterion = nn.MSECriterion()  
trainer = nn.StochasticGradient(mlp, criterion)
trainer.learningRate = 0.01
trainer:train(dataset)

Test the network

x = torch.Tensor(2)
x[1] =  0.5; x[2] =  0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))
x[1] =  0.5; x[2] = -0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))
x[1] = -0.5; x[2] =  0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))
x[1] = -0.5; x[2] = -0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

You should see something like:

> x = torch.Tensor(2)
> x[1] =  0.5; x[2] =  0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

-0.3490
[torch.Tensor of dimension 1]

> x[1] =  0.5; x[2] = -0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

 1.0561
[torch.Tensor of dimension 1]

> x[1] = -0.5; x[2] =  0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

 0.8640
[torch.Tensor of dimension 1]

> x[1] = -0.5; x[2] = -0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

-0.2941
[torch.Tensor of dimension 1]

Example of manual training of a neural network

We show an example here on a classical XOR problem.

Neural Network

We create a simple neural network with one hidden layer.

require "nn"
mlp = nn.Sequential();  -- make a multi-layer perceptron
inputs = 2; outputs = 1; HUs = 20; -- parameters
mlp:add(nn.Linear(inputs, HUs))
mlp:add(nn.Tanh())
mlp:add(nn.Linear(HUs, outputs))

Loss function

We choose the Mean Squared Error criterion.

criterion = nn.MSECriterion()

Training

We create data on the fly and feed it to the neural network.

for i = 1,2500 do
  -- random sample
  local input= torch.randn(2);     -- normally distributed example in 2d
  local output= torch.Tensor(1);
  if input[1]*input[2] > 0 then  -- calculate label for XOR function
    output[1] = -1
  else
    output[1] = 1
  end

  -- feed it to the neural network and the criterion
  criterion:forward(mlp:forward(input), output)

  -- train over this example in 3 steps
  -- (1) zero the accumulation of the gradients
  mlp:zeroGradParameters()
  -- (2) accumulate gradients
  mlp:backward(input, criterion:backward(mlp.output, output))
  -- (3) update parameters with a 0.01 learning rate
  mlp:updateParameters(0.01)
end

Test the network

x = torch.Tensor(2)
x[1] =  0.5; x[2] =  0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))
x[1] =  0.5; x[2] = -0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))
x[1] = -0.5; x[2] =  0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))
x[1] = -0.5; x[2] = -0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

You should see something like:

> x = torch.Tensor(2)
> x[1] =  0.5; x[2] =  0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

-0.6140
[torch.Tensor of dimension 1]

> x[1] =  0.5; x[2] = -0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

 0.8878
[torch.Tensor of dimension 1]

> x[1] = -0.5; x[2] =  0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

 0.8548
[torch.Tensor of dimension 1]

> x[1] = -0.5; x[2] = -0.5; print(mlp:forward(x))

-0.5498
[torch.Tensor of dimension 1]