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REVIEW 3 major objections 3 minor 17 references

Modular addition without black-boxes: Compressing explanations of MLPs that compute numerical integration

T0 review · 3 major / 3 minor · reviewed 2026-08-11 · deepseek-v4-flash

Pith's one-line read The ReLU MLP in a modular-addition transformer is best understood as a quadrature scheme, and this interpretation yields non-vacuous error bounds in time linear in the parameter count.

desk verdict A genuinely new interpretation of the ReLU MLP in pizza-algorithm transformers, with an honest but incomplete non-vacuous bound; worth refereeing. read the letter →

arxiv 2412.03773 v1 pith:FS63F4S3 submitted 2024-12-04 cs.LG cs.AI

classification cs.LGcs.AI
keywords mechanisticinterpretabilitymodularadditionReLUMLPfeature-mapcompressionnumericalquadraturetrigonometricintegralidentityfrequencydoublingnon-vacuouserrorbounds
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

The pith

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The reading

The paper tries to open the last black box in a classic toy model of mechanistic interpretability: the ReLU MLP inside a one-layer constant-attention transformer trained on modular addition. It claims that the MLP's frequency-doubling step is numerical integration. Each neuron contributes a rectangle whose height is the value of $\mathrm{ReLU}[\sigma_k \cos(k(a+b)/2 + \phi)] \cos(kc + 2\phi)$ and whose width comes from the neuron's weight, and the sum over neurons approximates the identity $\int_{-\pi}^{\pi} \mathrm{ReLU}[\sigma_k \cos(k(a+b)/2 + \phi)] \cos(kc + 2\phi)\,d\phi = \frac{2}{3}\cos(k(a+b-c))$. If correct, this is the first rigorous compression of a nonlinear feature-map in these models, with non-vacuous relative error bounds, all below 1, computable in time linear in the number of parameters rather than by enumerating all inputs. The paper also explains why 'pizza' models look 'clock-like': a secondary frequency, double the primary, contributes a compensating term when $|\cos(k(a-b)/2)|$ is near zero.

What carries the argument

The central object is the quadrature scheme: the finite neuron sum is read as a Riemann-style integral over the phase variable $\phi$. The key identity is $\int_{-\pi}^{\pi} \mathrm{ReLU}[\sigma_k \cos(k(a+b)/2 + \phi)] \cos(kc + 2\phi)\,d\phi = \frac{2}{3}\cos(k(a+b-c))$. The mechanism that makes the reduction work is the amplitude-phase Fourier representation of the model's weight matrices, which reveals that each neuron has a single dominant frequency $k$, that its output phase is approximately double its input phase ($\psi_i \approx 2\phi_i$), and that the phases are roughly uniformly distributed; those facts justify grouping neurons into clusters $I_k$ and replacing each cluster's sum by an integral. To bound the error in linear time, the paper splits ReLU into its identity part $x/2$, whose integral vanishes, and its absolute-value part $|x|/2$, whose Lipschitz constant bounds the rectangle error via $\sup |h'| \le 2$.

What would settle it

Train the same constant-attention one-layer transformer on modular addition with a different modulus or width and inspect the phase plot for each key-frequency cluster: if any cluster that still solves the task has the $\psi_i \approx 2\phi_i$ regression with $R^2$ below 0.9, the quadrature interpretation is not the mechanism. Equivalently, compute the paper's relative error bound on a trained model and look for any input triple $(a,b,c)$ where it exceeds 1.

Watch

Extended reading notes

Core claim

On the paper's own terms, the central discovery is that the trained MLP layer computes the pizza algorithm's frequency-doubling step by numerical quadrature, not by an opaque feature interaction. For each key frequency $k$, neurons cluster into a group $I_k$; after sorting their input phases $\phi_i$, the normalized MLP output $\sum_{i\in I_k} w_i\, \mathrm{ReLU}[\sigma_k \cos(k(a+b)/2 + \phi_i)] \cos(kc + 2\phi_i)$ is a rectangle-rule approximation to the integral in Eq. (5), which equals $\frac{2}{3}\cos(k(a+b-c))$. The paper establishes the structure by amplitude-phase Fourier analysis: most neurons are dominated by a single key frequency, and the output phase $\psi_i$ is almost exactly twice the input phase $\phi_i$, with $R^2 > 0.99$. It then validates the interpretation by computing relative error bounds between 0.48 and 0.70 for the mainline model, all strictly below 1, in time $O(d_{\text{mlp}} + p)$, and shows the phenomenon recurs across 100 of 151 randomly seeded models.

Load-bearing premise

The argument rests on an empirical regularity rather than a proven theorem: in a trained model, each neuron is dominated by a single key frequency and its output phase is almost exactly twice its input phase; if that pattern breaks, the clustering into $I_k$ and the reduction to Eq. (5) collapse.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

  • Verifying the MLP's behavior no longer requires enumerating all $p^2$ input pairs; the paper's bound runs in $O(d_{\text{mlp}} + p)$ time, which is linear in the parameter count.
  • Splitting ReLU into identity plus absolute-value parts shows the nonlinear part alone implements the pizza logits, while the identity part is exactly compressible through a matrix $A$ with $\mathrm{logit} = A[:,a] + A[:,b]$.
  • Secondary frequencies equal to twice each key frequency produce a $-\frac{\pi}{2}\cos(k(a-b))\cos(k(a+b-c))$ correction that compensates for the pizza algorithm's weakness when $|\cos(k(a-b)/2)| \approx 0$, explaining why overall logits regress better against the clock form.
  • Across 100 'good' models from 151 random seeds, 82% of (model, frequency) pairs have empirical integration errors below 0.1, and the median normalized bound is 0.40 versus a naive baseline of 0.85.
  • The same quadrature-error machinery applies to both signs $\sigma_k = \pm 1$ because the integral identity holds for both, so the bound covers all inputs without case-splitting.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • Because the paper only trains with modulus $p=59$, a direct testable extension is to check whether the single-frequency and phase-doubling regularity persists at larger moduli; if it does, the same $O(d_{\text{mlp}}+p)$ bound should hold there.
  • The rectangle-error argument relies only on a bounded derivative and sorted phases, so a similar quadrature compression may apply to other pointwise nonlinearities with bounded Lipschitz constants, not just ReLU.
  • The paper's split of ReLU into an exactly compressible linear part and a quadrature-compressible nonlinear residual suggests a general recipe for compressing nonlinear layers: isolate the linear component, then integrate the nonlinear residual.
  • If larger transformers show 'clock-like' logit regressions, the secondary-frequency compensation mechanism implies that the underlying computation may still be pizza-like; a purely logit-level regression cannot distinguish the two algorithms.
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Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, and a circularity audit.

Referee Report

3 major / 3 minor

Summary. This paper studies one-layer constant-attention ReLU transformers trained on modular addition (the 'pizza' models of Zhong et al.). The authors propose that the MLP layer implements frequency doubling by numerical quadrature: after sorting neurons by their input phase φ_i, the sum over neurons is interpreted as a Riemann sum for the integral ∫ ReLU[σ_k cos(k(a+b)/2 + φ)] cos(kc + 2φ) dφ = (2/3) cos(k(a+b-c)). They support this with empirical phase-amplitude observations (single-frequency dominance, ψ_i ≈ 2φ_i), an analytic derivation of the integral identity, and computed quadrature error bounds (Tables 1–3) that are non-vacuous (relative error bounds 0.48–0.70) and computable in time linear in the number of neurons. The paper also explains how secondary frequencies at 2k improve robustness when |cos(k(a-b)/2)| is small.

Significance. If the full claimed result were established, this would be an important step in mechanistic interpretability: a rigorous, non-vacuous, linear-time-certifiable compression of a nonlinear MLP feature map, going beyond prior black-box descriptions. The analytic integral identity in Appendix E is clean and parameter-free, and the empirical quadrature errors (0.03–0.05) are convincingly small. The systematic validation across 151 training runs and the released code are strengths. However, the significance is currently undercut by the gap between the bound that is proved and the bound that is advertised; the non-vacuous certificate is for an idealized primary-frequency model, not for the full trained MLP.

major comments (3)
  1. [§5, Appendix L.2] The non-vacuous bound advertised in the abstract and Section 5 is not a bound on the full ReLU MLP. Equation (13) and Table 1 bound the quadrature error of the idealized sum in Eq. (4), in which each neuron has been replaced by its primary Fourier component and the output phase is set to exactly 2φ_i. The projection error between the actual MLP and this idealized sum is not bounded: the identity component of ReLU, the residual-stream terms (OVE on x and y, the MLP bias, the embed of y), the secondary frequencies, and the non-primary components of W_L are all excluded. Appendix L.2 states this explicitly ('To bound the error of our interpretation of the MLP precisely, we'd need to include a bound on the primary frequency contribution of the identity component...'). Tables 2 and 3 report errors and bounds for the h-functions, not for the model logits. The abstract's claim of 'a non-vacuous bound on the behaviour of the ReLU MLP' is therefore not supported; at present the paper provides a non-vacuous bound on a component of an idealized version of the MLP.
  2. [§5.2, Table 3, Appendix H] The empirical 'Normalised ... error' rows are brute-force evaluations of the h-function quadrature error, not worst-case bounds on the model's logits, and the 'Total numerical ... bound' rows are bounds for the same h-functions. Reporting these as evidence that 'the model is indeed performing numerical integration' conflates an empirical fit with a formal guarantee. Moreover, the R² statistics in Figures 3 and 4 are aggregate goodness-of-fit measures; they do not certify the worst-case accuracy of the phase-doubling and single-frequency assumptions on which the bound's validity depends. The paper should either present a bound that covers the full logit expression or explicitly narrow the claim to the idealized primary-frequency model throughout the abstract and introduction.
  3. [§4.3, Eq. (4), Appendix C] The reduction to Eq. (4) assumes that every neuron can be assigned to a single key frequency cluster I_k and that the output phase satisfies ψ_i = 2φ_i. These are empirical observations, not theorems, and the coverage is incomplete: Appendix C reports that only 100 of 151 models are 'good' (frequency matching for all neurons), and for many of these the phase R² or the uniformity of angle widths falls below the thresholds. The error bound in §5 inherits the projection error from any neuron that does not satisfy these assumptions, and the paper does not quantify that error for the excluded models. The main text should state these coverage limitations and their impact on the validity of the bound.
minor comments (3)
  1. [§4.3, Eq. (4)] The phrase 'can we well-thought of as approximating the integral' should read 'can be thought of as approximating the integral'.
  2. [Figure 2 caption] The caption says 'The MLP approximately computes the integral', but the plotted h(φ) is not the full MLP output; consider rephrasing to 'the primary-frequency absolute-value component is approximated by the integral'.
  3. [§5.1, Eq. (13)] The displayed formula mixes the case distinction with the absolute value; adding a short derivation of the interval integral would improve readability.

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged · score 2.0 of 10

No significant circularity: the trigonometric integral identity and quadrature error bound are derived independently of the fitted model, though the paper's compression criterion is self-cited and the headline MLP bound currently covers only the idealized primary-frequency absolute-value part.

full rationale

The paper's core derivation is self-contained rather than circular. The integral identity in Eq. (5), ∫ ReLU[σ_k cos(k(a+b)/2 + φ)] cos(kc + 2φ) dφ = (2/3) cos(k(a+b−c)), is derived in Appendix E from standard trigonometric identities with no dependence on trained weights. The empirical regularities that drive the interpretation—single-frequency dominance, ψ_i ≈ 2φ_i, and roughly uniform phase spacing—are discovered from Fourier analysis of the trained models (Section 4.2, Figures 3–4) and are not imposed to force Eq. (6). The Section 5 error bound is a genuine mathematical upper bound on the quadrature error of the idealized sum in Eq. (4); it is computed from the model's extracted phases and weights plus the analytic bound sup|h'| ≤ 2, and it holds uniformly over a, b, c in O(d_mlp + p) time. This is not a fitted parameter renamed as a prediction, because the weights and phases are model parameters rather than free parameters optimized to match the integral. The main caveat is scope, not circularity: as Appendix L.2 explicitly states, 'To bound the error of our interpretation of the MLP precisely, we'd need to include a bound on the primary frequency contribution of the identity component... and include bounds on the residual components,' so the advertised bound on 'the behaviour of the ReLU MLP' is presently a bound on the idealized primary-frequency absolute-value part, not the full trained MLP. That is an admitted omitted proof/limitation and a correctness risk, but it does not make the derivation circular. The only self-referential element is the framing target from Gross et al. (2024), whose authors overlap with four of the five authors of this paper; the 'non-vacuous bound in linear time' criterion is imported from that work, but it is a formalization choice rather than a load-bearing theorem, and the trigonometric and quadrature analysis stands independently of it. Overall, no step of the derivation reduces by construction to its own inputs; the observed model structure is an input to the interpretation, and the integral identity and bound are evaluated against that structure rather than derived from it.

Assumptions & free parameters 7 free parameters · 5 assumptions · 0 invented entities

The interpretation is post-hoc: all quadrature parameters, including key frequencies, neuron phases, output phases, rectangle weights, and secondary-frequency coefficients, are read off from trained models. The analytic integral identity itself is parameter-free, but the empirical claim that a trained MLP approximates it depends on model-specific fitted quantities. The paper's value is the compression scheme and the formal error-bound methodology, not a universal law about how such networks must behave.

free parameters (7)
  • Key frequency set K (mainline: 12, 18, 21, 22) = 12, 18, 21, 22 (multiplied by 2π/p)
    Selected as the dominant Fourier frequencies in the trained model's OV and WL matrices; they define the per-frequency clusters I_k and appear in the integral identity.
  • Per-neuron primary frequency assignment I_k = varies per model
    Neurons are grouped by largest Fourier component; the paper reports most neurons have the same largest frequency in pre-activation and WL row (Section 4.2, Figure 4).
  • Neuron input phases φ_i = not tabulated
    Extracted from the phase of the primary Fourier component of each neuron's pre-activation; used as quadrature nodes.
  • Neuron output phases ψ_i = ψ_i ≈ 2φ_i, R2 > 0.99
    Used to rewrite the neuron-logit map as cos(kc + 2φ_i); the residual ψ_i - 2φ_i is later bounded as an angle approximation error.
  • Quadrature weights w'_i (rectangle widths) = not tabulated
    Derived from the trained WU Wout and normalization factors; widths and sorted phases define the Riemann-sum approximation.
  • Per-frequency normalization or scale Z_k = empirical, not tabulated
    Appears in Eq. (3) as the amplitude that turns the empirical sum into the ideal cos(2s) form.
  • Secondary frequency coefficients β_i and phase offsets = φ_2 ≈ 2φ_1 + π, R2 > 0.99
    Fitted in Section 6 and Appendix F to explain the clock-versus-pizza discrepancy; these are additional free parameters of the interpretation.
assumptions (5)
  • domain assumption Trained one-layer constant-attention transformers trained on modular addition implement the pizza frequency-doubling algorithm as characterized by Zhong et al. (2023).
    The paper's starting point; the integral interpretation is built on this prior characterization (Section 2.3).
  • ad hoc to paper The infinite-width lens conditions hold: there exists a neuron-indexed integration variable ξ such that weights are approximately linear in node spacing and the integrand is sufficiently continuous.
    Appendix J introduces these conditions to justify replacing the finite sum with an integral; no proof is given that trained ReLU networks satisfy them beyond the empirical evidence in Section 4.2.
  • domain assumption For each neuron, the largest Fourier component of the pre-activation and of the corresponding WL row share the same frequency, and the output phase is twice the input phase.
    Section 4.2 and Figures 3 and 4; this is the empirical regularity that makes the clustering and Eq. (5) possible.
  • domain assumption Residual stream and identity-component contributions can be bounded separately and are small enough not to invalidate the compressed explanation.
    Section 5.1 splits ReLU into x/2 plus |x|/2 and defers the identity part; Appendix L.2 acknowledges that a full combined bound remains unfinished.
  • standard math Standard trigonometric identities and the Lipschitz bound on the derivative of h are used in the quadrature error analysis.
    Appendices D, E, and G; these are unproved background results but standard.

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Cite this review

Pith. "Pith review of Modular addition without black-boxes: Compressing explanations of MLPs that compute numerical integration." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/FS63F4S3

@misc{pith2026241203773,
  author       = {Pith},
  title        = {Pith review of: Modular addition without black-boxes: Compressing explanations of MLPs that compute numerical integration},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/FS63F4S3}},
  note         = {Machine review of arXiv:2412.03773}
}
read the original abstract

The goal of mechanistic interpretability is discovering simpler, low-rank algorithms implemented by models. While we can compress activations into features, compressing nonlinear feature-maps -- like MLP layers -- is an open problem. In this work, we present the first case study in rigorously compressing nonlinear feature-maps, which are the leading asymptotic bottleneck to compressing small transformer models. We work in the classic setting of the modular addition models, and target a non-vacuous bound on the behaviour of the ReLU MLP in time linear in the parameter-count of the circuit. To study the ReLU MLP analytically, we use the infinite-width lens, which turns post-activation matrix multiplications into approximate integrals. We discover a novel interpretation of} the MLP layer in one-layer transformers implementing the ``pizza'' algorithm: the MLP can be understood as evaluating a quadrature scheme, where each neuron computes the area of a rectangle under the curve of a trigonometric integral identity. Our code is available at https://tinyurl.com/mod-add-integration.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2412.03773 by the authors.

Figure 1
Figure 1. (Left) There are finitely many neurons in the model (indexed by [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p002_1.png] view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. The MLP approximately computes the integral R π −π h(ϕ) dϕ. The computed integral is for frequency k = 12 when a + b = c = 0. The widths and heights of rectangles are generated by the actual weights in a trained model. Gross et al. (2024) conduct a limited empirical study of models trained to compute the max￾imum of k integers, which are attention-only transformers with no MLP layers. Our work can be seen as applyin… view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. The input (ϕi) and output (ψi) phase shift angles for frequency k = 12, where ψi ≈ 2ϕi (mod 2π) for the primary frequency of each neu￾ron. The line has R2 > 0.99 and the intervals between angles have mean width 0.054, and stan￾dard deviation 0.049. This shows that the angles are roughly uniform. We find that each neuron has a primary fre￾quency for both input and output. As seen in [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig… view at source ↗
Figures from the paper (36 more)
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Histograms of the variance explained by the largest Fourier frequency component for the [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p006_4.png]
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: We plot the error bound ±2(ϕ − ϕi), depicted in red, for frequency k = 12. We observe that the red area includes both the actual curve and the numerical integration approximation. We use ±2 as a bound on h ′ (ϕ) because the Lipschitz constant of h is 2. analytically, a…
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Numerical integration R π −π h(ϕ) dϕ with boxes centered at ϕi for frequency k = 12. Shad￾ing is used to represent overlap of boxes. We now provide empirical validation of our in￾terpretation. The network is well-approximated as doing numerical integration. We can comp…
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: We plot the input phase shifts of the two frequencies. We observe that not only are the [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p009_7.png]
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: The MLP computes logits by approximate numerical integration. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p012_8.png]
Figure 9
Figure 9. Figure 9: We plot the input phase shifts of primary and tertiary frequencies. We observe that for [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p013_9.png]
Figure 10
Figure 10. Figure 10: We plot the input phase shifts of primary and quaternary frequencies. We observe that [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p013_10.png]
Figure 11
Figure 11. Figure 11: The key frequencies for this model are 12, 18, 21, and 22 (multiplied by 2π/p) −π − π 2 0 π 2 π −π − π 2 0 π 2 π ϕi ψi Primary frequency Non-primary frequency ψ ≡ 2ϕ (mod 2π) [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_11.png]
Figure 12
Figure 12. Figure 12: Angles for frequency k = 12. ψi ≈ 2ϕi (mod 2π) for the primary frequency of each neuron but not in general. 14 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_12.png]
Figure 13
Figure 13. Figure 13: Angles for frequency k = 18. ψi ≈ 2ϕi (mod 2π) for the primary frequency of each neuron but not in general. −π − π 2 0 π 2 π −π − π 2 0 π 2 π ϕi ψi Primary frequency Non-primary frequency ψ ≡ 2ϕ (mod 2π) [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p015_13.png]
Figure 14
Figure 14. Figure 14: Angles for frequency k = 21. ψi ≈ 2ϕi (mod 2π) for the primary frequency of each neuron but not in general. −π − π 2 0 π 2 π −π − π 2 0 π 2 π ϕi ψi Primary frequency Non-primary frequency ψ ≡ 2ϕ (mod 2π) [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p015_14.png]
Figure 15
Figure 15. Figure 15: Angles for frequency k = 22. ψi ≈ 2ϕi (mod 2π) for the primary frequency of each neuron but not in general. 15 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p015_15.png]
Figure 16
Figure 16. Figure 16: Converting the weighted sum into rectangles to estimate the integral [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p016_16.png]
Figure 17
Figure 17. Figure 17: Error bound is the red area (for frequency [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p016_17.png]
Figure 18
Figure 18. Figure 18: Converting the weighted sum into rectangles to estimate the integral [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p016_18.png]
Figure 19
Figure 19. Figure 19: Error bound is the red area (for frequency [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p017_19.png]
Figure 20
Figure 20. Figure 20: Converting the weighted sum into rectangles to estimate the integral [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p017_20.png]
Figure 21
Figure 21. Figure 21: Error bound is the red area (for frequency [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p017_21.png]
Figure 22
Figure 22. Figure 22: Converting the weighted sum into rectangles to estimate the integral [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p018_22.png]
Figure 23
Figure 23. Figure 23: Error bound is the red area (for frequency [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p018_23.png]
Figure 24
Figure 24. Figure 24: Converting the weighted sum into rectangles to estimate the integral [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p018_24.png]
Figure 25
Figure 25. Figure 25: Error bound is the red area (for frequency [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p019_25.png]
Figure 26
Figure 26. Figure 26: Converting the weighted sum into rectangles to estimate the integral [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p019_26.png]
Figure 27
Figure 27. Figure 27: Error bound is the red area (for frequency [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p019_27.png]
Figure 28
Figure 28. Figure 28: Converting the weighted sum into rectangles to estimate the integral [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p020_28.png]
Figure 29
Figure 29. Figure 29: Error bound is the red area (for frequency [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p020_29.png]
Figure 30
Figure 30. Figure 30: Converting the weighted sum into rectangles to estimate the integral [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p020_30.png]
Figure 31
Figure 31. Figure 31: Error bound is the red area (for frequency [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p021_31.png]
Figure 32
Figure 32. Figure 32: Most models have 3 to 5 key frequencies, which is in line with what we would expect to [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p022_32.png]
Figure 33
Figure 33. Figure 33: Key frequencies for the models are roughly uniformly distributed across all possible [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p022_33.png]
Figure 34
Figure 34. Figure 34: Residual connection from the attention stream causes mostly less than 3% of the variance [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p022_34.png]
Figure 35
Figure 35. Figure 35: For most neurons, above 90% of the variance of the ReLU input is explained by the largest [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p023_35.png]
Figure 36
Figure 36. Figure 36: For most neurons in ‘good’ models, above 98% of the variance of the [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p023_36.png]
Figure 37
Figure 37. Figure 37: Most of the pairs have normalised abs integral bounds less than [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p023_37.png]
Figure 38
Figure 38. Figure 38: The second largest non-zero Fourier component is 2 times the primary frequency for 83% [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p024_38.png]
Figure 39
Figure 39. Figure 39: Most of the (model, freq) pairs have the angle for the secondary frequency closely [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p024_39.png]

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    Zoom in: An introduction to circuits

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    The clock and the pizza: Two stories in mechanistic explanation of neural networks, 2023

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    write newline

    " write newline "" before.all 'output.state := FUNCTION n.dashify 't := "" t empty not t #1 #1 substring "-" = t #1 #2 substring "--" = not "--" * t #2 global.max substring 't := t #1 #1 substring "-" = "-" * t #2 global.max substring 't := while if t #1 #1 substring * t #2 gl...

  7. [15]

    @esa (Ref

    \@ifxundefined[1] #1\@undefined \@firstoftwo \@secondoftwo \@ifnum[1] #1 \@firstoftwo \@secondoftwo \@ifx[1] #1 \@firstoftwo \@secondoftwo [2] @ #1 \@temptokena #2 #1 @ \@temptokena \@ifclassloaded agu2001 natbib The agu2001 class already includes natbib coding, so you should ...

  8. [16]

    \@lbibitem[] @bibitem@first@sw\@secondoftwo \@lbibitem[#1]#2 \@extra@b@citeb \@ifundefined br@#2\@extra@b@citeb \@namedef br@#2 \@nameuse br@#2\@extra@b@citeb \@ifundefined b@#2\@extra@b@citeb @num @parse #2 @tmp #1 NAT@b@open@#2 NAT@b@shut@#2 \@ifnum @merge>\@ne @bibitem@firs...

  9. [17]

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    @open @close @open @close and [1] URL: #1 \@ifundefined chapter * \@mkboth \@ifxundefined @sectionbib * \@mkboth * \@mkboth\@gobbletwo \@ifclassloaded amsart * \@ifclassloaded amsbook * \@ifxundefined @heading @heading NAT@ctr thebibliography [1] @ \@biblabel @NAT@ctr \@bibset...

Pith tools

Reviewed August 11, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.