{"paper":{"title":"The Goldilocks zone: Towards better understanding of neural network loss landscapes","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.NE","stat.ML"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Adam Scherlis, Stanislav Fort","submitted_at":"2018-07-06T22:31:53Z","abstract_excerpt":"We explore the loss landscape of fully-connected and convolutional neural networks using random, low-dimensional hyperplanes and hyperspheres. Evaluating the Hessian, $H$, of the loss function on these hypersurfaces, we observe 1) an unusual excess of the number of positive eigenvalues of $H$, and 2) a large value of $\\mathrm{Tr}(H) / ||H||$ at a well defined range of configuration space radii, corresponding to a thick, hollow, spherical shell we refer to as the \\textit{Goldilocks zone}. We observe this effect for fully-connected neural networks over a range of network widths and depths on MNI"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1807.02581","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}