Pith. sign in

REVIEW 7 cited by

Optimal Regularization Can Mitigate Double Descent

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2003.01897 v2 pith:QYEAEV55 submitted 2020-03-04 cs.LG cs.NEmath.STstat.MLstat.TH

Optimal Regularization Can Mitigate Double Descent

classification cs.LG cs.NEmath.STstat.MLstat.TH
keywords regularizationsizedescentdoubletestalgorithmslinearmitigate
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

Recent empirical and theoretical studies have shown that many learning algorithms -- from linear regression to neural networks -- can have test performance that is non-monotonic in quantities such the sample size and model size. This striking phenomenon, often referred to as "double descent", has raised questions of if we need to re-think our current understanding of generalization. In this work, we study whether the double-descent phenomenon can be avoided by using optimal regularization. Theoretically, we prove that for certain linear regression models with isotropic data distribution, optimally-tuned $\ell_2$ regularization achieves monotonic test performance as we grow either the sample size or the model size. We also demonstrate empirically that optimally-tuned $\ell_2$ regularization can mitigate double descent for more general models, including neural networks. Our results suggest that it may also be informative to study the test risk scalings of various algorithms in the context of appropriately tuned regularization.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Pre-trained Large Language Models Learn Hidden Markov Models In-context

    cs.LG 2025-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Pre-trained LLMs learn to predict HMM-generated sequences via in-context learning, approaching theoretical optimum on synthetic HMMs and matching expert models on real animal decision data.

  2. A Theory on Flow Matching with Neural Networks

    cs.LG 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Establishes convergence guarantees for overparameterized 2-layer ReLU networks in flow matching, generalization bounds for the velocity-field objective, and Wasserstein guarantees for generated samples, using multi-ta...

  3. Double Descent in Quantum Kernel Ridge Regression

    quant-ph 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Quantum kernel ridge regression shows double descent in test risk, with the interpolation peak suppressible by regularization, via random matrix theory asymptotics in the high-dimensional limit.

  4. A Ridge Too Far: Correcting Over-Shrinkage via Negative Regularization

    cs.LG 2025-08 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Negative-capable ridge regression uses controlled negative regularization as anti-shrinkage to increase effective complexity along weak eigendirections and mitigate underfitting in small-data regression.

  5. Domain Adaptation of Mismatched Proximal Denoiser for Plug-and-Play Image Reconstruction

    eess.IV 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    For PnP-PGD, residual reconstruction error is bounded by average squared mismatch between the deployed denoiser and the target proximal map, motivating proximal-matching few-shot adaptation that outperforms MSE adapta...

  6. Unveiling Memorization-Generalization Coexistence: A Case Study on Arithmetic Tasks with Label Noise

    cs.LG 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Experiments on modular arithmetic with heavy label noise show that over-parameterized networks form a distributed internal generalization structure that can be extracted via frequency methods to achieve high accuracy ...

  7. Explaining Machine Learning and Memorization with Statistical Mechanics

    cs.LG 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 3.0

    Thesis uses statistical mechanics to study DAM and RBM models for understanding memorization, low-dimensional learning, and adversarial robustness in neural networks.