Plateaus training loss but validation loss decreases - tensorflow

I am training a fully convolutional regressor, with mobilenet as its backbone. I have already overcome a massive overfitting problem by augmenting the data. However, the training loss seems to be stuck after a couple of epochs. On the other hand, validation loss reduces for a reasonable number of epochs and plateaus. Here are the learning curves.
Learning curves
And here is the architecture and compiling parameters.
backbone = keras.applications.ResNet50(weights="imagenet",
include_top=False,
input_shape=(shape[0], shape[1], 3)
)
backbone.trainable = True
inputs = layers.Input((shape[0], shape[1], 3))
x = keras.applications.resnet.preprocess_input(inputs)
x = backbone(x)
x = layers.Dropout(0.5)(x)
x = layers.SeparableConv2D(
N, kernel_size=5, strides=1, activation="relu"
)(x)
outputs = layers.SeparableConv2D(
N, kernel_size=3, strides=1
)(x)
model = keras.Model(inputs, outputs, name="mobilenet_FullyConv_rect")
model.compile(loss="mse", optimizer=keras.optimizers.Adam(1e-4))
history = model.fit(train_gen, validation_data=val_gen,
epochs=epochs,
batch_size=batch_size
)
Any idea of why training loss faces plateaus sooner than val loss is appreciated. Also any suggestions to how I can reach smaller loss values instead of facing plateaus soon.
I have tried using more complex backbones like ResNet50 and DenseNet169, as I suspected underfitting. However, this did not solve anything and validation loss was having massive fluctuations. I also tried augmenting my data even more ( trippling the data instead of doubling ). This did not help very much either, which makes me believe that this is actually underfitting, since feeding more data did not lead to improvements. To put it short, I am kind of lost between bringing more data or making my architecture more complex.

Related

My model fit too slow, tringle of val_loss is 90

I have a task to write a neural network. On input of 9 neurons, and output of 4 neurons for a multiclass classification problem. I have tried different models and for all of them:
Drop-out mechanism is used.
Batch normalization is used.
And the resulting neural networks all are overfitting. Precision is <80%, I want to have min 90% precision. Loss is 0.8 on the median.
Please, can you suggest to me what model I should use?
Dataset:
TMS_coefficients.RData file
Part of my code:
(trainX, testX, trainY, testY) = train_test_split(dataset,
values, test_size=0.25, random_state=42)
# модель нейронки
visible = layers.Input(shape=(9,))
hidden0 = layers.Dense(64, activation="tanh")(visible)
batch0 = layers.BatchNormalization()(hidden0)
drop0 = layers.Dropout(0.3)(batch0)
hidden1 = layers.Dense(32, activation="tanh")(drop0)
batch1 = layers.BatchNormalization()(hidden1)
drop1 = layers.Dropout(0.2)(batch1)
hidden2 = layers.Dense(128, activation="tanh")(drop1)
batch2 = layers.BatchNormalization()(hidden2)
drop2 = layers.Dropout(0.5)(batch2)
hidden3 = layers.Dense(64, activation="tanh")(drop2)
batch3 = layers.BatchNormalization()(hidden3)
output = layers.Dense(4, activation="softmax")(batch3)
model = tf.keras.Model(inputs=visible, outputs=output)
model.compile(optimizer=tf.keras.optimizers.Adam(0.0001),
loss='categorical_crossentropy',
metrics=['Precision'],)
history = model.fit(trainX, trainY, validation_data=(testX, testY), epochs=5000, batch_size=256)
From the loss curve, I can say it is not overfitting at all! In fact, your model is underfitting. Why? because, when you have stopped training, the loss curve for the validation set has not become flat yet. That means, your model still has the potential to do well if it was trained more.
The model overfits when the training loss is decreasing (or remains the same) but the validation loss gradually increases without decreasing. This is clearly not the case
So, what you can do:
Try training longer.
Add more layers.
Try different activation functions like ReLU instead of tanh.
Use lower dropout (probably your model is struggling to learn for high value of dropouts).
Make sure you have shuffled your data before train-test splitting (if you are using sklearn for train_test_split() then it is done by default) and also check if the test data is similar to the train data and both of them goes under the same preprocessing steps.

LSTM training difficulties

I wanted to train LSTM model for tabular time series data. My data shape is
((7342689, 50, 5), (7342689,))
I was having a hard time to handle the training loss. Initially I tried with default learning rate , but it didn't help. My class label is severely skewed. I have added focal loss and class weights to handle class imbalance issues. I have tried with adding one more layer with 50 neurons, but that loss started to increase instead of decrease. I appreciate your suggestions. Thanks!
Here is my current model architecture:
adam = Adam(learning_rate=0.0001)
model = keras.Sequential()
model.add(LSTM(100, input_shape = (50, 5)))
model.add(Dropout(0.5))
model.add(Dense(1, activation="sigmoid"))
model.compile(loss=tfa.losses.SigmoidFocalCrossEntropy()
, metrics=[keras.metrics.binary_accuracy]
, optimizer=adam)
model.summary()
class_weights = dict(zip(np.unique(y_train), class_weight.compute_class_weight('balanced', classes=np.unique(y_train),y=y_train)))
history=model.fit(X_train, y_train, batch_size=64, epochs=50,class_weight=class_weights)
The loss of the model first decreased and then increased, which may be because the optimization process got stuck in a local optimal solution. Maybe you can try reducing the learning rate and increasing the epoch.

Prevent exploding loss function multi-step multi-variate/output forecast ConvLSTM

I have a plausible problem that currently fails to solve. During the training, my loss function explodes becomes inf or NaN, because the MSE of all errors becomes huge if the predictions (at the beginning of the training) are worse. And that is the normal intended behavior and correct. But, how do I train a ConvLSTM to which loss function to be able to learn a multi-step multi-variate output?
E.g. i try a (32, None, 200, 12) to predict (32, None, 30, 12). 32 is the batch size, None is the number of samples (>3000). 200 is the number of time steps, 12 features wide. 30 output time steps, 12 features wide.
My ConvLSTM model:
input = Input(shape=(None, input_shape[1]))
conv1d_1 = Conv1D(filters=64, kernel_size=3, activation=LeakyReLU())(input)
conv1d_2 = Conv1D(filters=32, kernel_size=3, activation=LeakyReLU())(conv1d_1)
dropout = Dropout(0.3)(conv1d_2)
lstm_1 = LSTM(32, activation=LeakyReLU())(dropout)
dense_1 = Dense(forecasting_horizon * input_shape[1], activation=LeakyReLU())(lstm_1)
output = Reshape((forecasting_horizon, input_shape[1]))(dense_1)
model = Model(inputs=input, outputs=output)
My ds generation:
ds_inputs = tf.keras.utils.timeseries_dataset_from_array(df[:-forecast_horizon], None, sequence_length=window_size, sequence_stride=1,
shuffle=False, batch_size=None)
ds_targets = tf.keras.utils.timeseries_dataset_from_array(df[forecast_horizon:], None, sequence_length=forecast_horizon, sequence_stride=1,
shuffle=False, batch_size=None)
ds_inputs = ds_inputs.batch(batch_size, drop_remainder=True)
ds_targets = ds_targets.batch(batch_size, drop_remainder=True)
ds = tf.data.Dataset.zip((ds_inputs, ds_targets))
ds = ds.shuffle(buffer_size=(len(ds)))
Besides MSE, I already tried MeanAbsoluteError, MeanSquaredLogarithmicError, MeanAbsolutePercentageError, CosineSimilarity. Where the last, produce non-sense. MSLE works best but does not favor large errors and therefore the MSE (used as metric has an incredible variation during training). Additionally, after a while, the Network becomes stale and gets no better loss (my explanation is that the difference in loss becomes too minor on the logarithmic scale and therefore the weights cannot be well adjusted).
I can partially answer my own question. One issue is that I used ReLu/LeakyReLu which will lead to exploding gradient problem because the RNN/LSTM Layer applies the same weights over time leading to exploding values as the values add up. Weights will not be reduced by any chance (ReLu min == 0). With Tanh as activation, it is possible to have negative values which also allow a reduction of the internal weights and really minimize the chance of exploding weights/predictions within the network. After some tests, the LSTM layer stays numerical stable.

How to avoid overfitting in CNN?

I'm making a model for predicting the age of people by analyzing their face. I'm using this pretrained model, and maked a custom loss function and a custom metrics. So I obtain discrete result but I want to improve it. In particular, I noticed that after some epochs the model begin to overfitt on the training set then the val_loss increases. How can I avoid this? I'm already using Dropout, but this doesn't seem to be enough.
I think maybe I should use l1 and l2 but I don't know how.
def resnet_model():
model = VGGFace(model = 'resnet50')#model :{resnet50, vgg16, senet50}
xl = model.get_layer('avg_pool').output
x = keras.layers.Flatten(name='flatten')(xl)
x = keras.layers.Dense(4096, activation='relu')(x)
x = keras.layers.Dropout(0.5)(x)
x = keras.layers.Dense(4096, activation='relu')(x)
x = keras.layers.Dropout(0.5)(x)
x = keras.layers.Dense(11, activation='softmax', name='predictions')(x)
model = keras.engine.Model(model.input, outputs = x)
return model
model = resnet_model()
initial_learning_rate = 0.0003
epochs = 20; batch_size = 110
num_steps = train_x.shape[0]//batch_size
learning_rate_fn = tf.keras.optimizers.schedules.PiecewiseConstantDecay(
[3*num_steps, 10*num_steps, 16*num_steps, 25*num_steps],
[1e-4, 1e-5, 1e-6, 1e-7, 5e-7]
)
optimizer = tf.keras.optimizers.Adam(learning_rate=learning_rate_fn)
model.compile(loss=custom_loss, optimizer=optimizer, metrics=['accuracy', one_off_accuracy])
model.fit(train_x, train_y, epochs=epochs, batch_size=batch_size, validation_data=(test_x, test_y))
This is an example of result:
There are many regularization methods to help you avoid overfitting your model:
Dropouts:
Randomly disables neurons during the training, in order to force other neurons to be trained as well.
L1/L2 penalties:
Penalizes weights that change dramatically. This tries to ensure that all parameters will be equally taken into consideration when classifying an input.
Random Gaussian Noise at the inputs:
Adds random gaussian noise at the inputs: x = x + r where r is a random normal value from range [-1, 1]. This will confuse your model and prevent it from overfitting into your dataset, because in every epoch, each input will be different.
Label Smoothing:
Instead of saying that a target is 0 or 1, You can smooth those values (e.g. 0.1 & 0.9).
Early Stopping:
This is a quite common technique for avoiding training your model too much. If you notice that your model's loss is decreasing along with the validation's accuracy, then this is a good sign to stop the training, as your model begins to overfit.
K-Fold Cross-Validation:
This is a very strong technique, which ensures that your model is not fed all the time with the same inputs and is not overfitting.
Data Augmentations:
By rotating/shifting/zooming/flipping/padding etc. an image you make sure that your model is forced to train better its parameters and not overfit to the existing dataset.
I am quite sure there are also more techniques to avoid overfitting. This repository contains many examples of how the above techniques are deployed in a dataset:
https://github.com/kochlisGit/Tensorflow-State-of-the-Art-Neural-Networks
You can try incorporate image augmentation in your training, which increases the "sample size" of your data as well as the "diversity" as #Suraj S Jain mentioned. The official tutorial is here: https://www.tensorflow.org/tutorials/images/data_augmentation

Why I'm getting bad result with Keras vs random forest or knn?

I'm learning deep learning with keras and trying to compare the results (accuracy) with machine learning algorithms (sklearn) (i.e random forest, k_neighbors)
It seems that with keras I'm getting the worst results.
I'm working on simple classification problem: iris dataset
My keras code looks:
samples = datasets.load_iris()
X = samples.data
y = samples.target
df = pd.DataFrame(data=X)
df.columns = samples.feature_names
df['Target'] = y
# prepare data
X = df[df.columns[:-1]]
y = df[df.columns[-1]]
# hot encoding
encoder = LabelEncoder()
y1 = encoder.fit_transform(y)
y = pd.get_dummies(y1).values
# split
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size = 0.3)
# build model
model = Sequential()
model.add(Dense(1000, activation='tanh', input_shape = ((df.shape[1]-1),)))
model.add(Dense(500, activation='tanh'))
model.add(Dense(250, activation='tanh'))
model.add(Dense(125, activation='tanh'))
model.add(Dense(64, activation='tanh'))
model.add(Dense(32, activation='tanh'))
model.add(Dense(9, activation='tanh'))
model.add(Dense(y.shape[1], activation='softmax'))
model.compile(optimizer='adam', loss='categorical_crossentropy', metrics=['accuracy'])
model.fit(X_train, y_train)
score, acc = model.evaluate(X_test, y_test, verbose=0)
#results:
#score = 0.77
#acc = 0.711
I have tired to add layers and/or change number of units per layer and/or change the activation function (to relu) by it seems that the result are not higher than 0.85.
With sklearn random forest or k_neighbors I'm getting result (on same dataset) above 0.95.
What am I missing ?
With sklearn I did little effort and got good results, and with keras, I had a lot of upgrades but not as good as sklearn results. why is that ?
How can I get same results with keras ?
In short, you need:
ReLU activations
Simpler model
Data mormalization
More epochs
In detail:
The first issue here is that nowadays we never use activation='tanh' for the intermediate network layers. In such problems, we practically always use activation='relu'.
The second issue is that you have build quite a large Keras model, and it might very well be the case that with only 100 iris samples in your training set you have too few data to effectively train such a large model. Try reducing drastically both the number of layers and the number of nodes per layer. Start simpler.
Large neural networks really thrive when we have lots of data, but in cases of small datasets, like here, their expressiveness and flexibility may become a liability instead, compared with simpler algorithms, like RF or k-nn.
The third issue is that, in contrast to tree-based models, like Random Forests, neural networks generally require normalizing the data, which you don't do. Truth is that knn also requires normalized data, but in this special case, since all iris features are in the same scale, it does not affect the performance negatively.
Last but not least, you seem to run your Keras model for only one epoch (the default value if you don't specify anything in model.fit); this is somewhat equivalent to building a random forest with a single tree (which, BTW, is still much better than a single decision tree).
All in all, with the following changes in your code:
from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler
sc = StandardScaler()
X_train = sc.fit_transform(X_train)
X_test = sc.transform(X_test)
model = Sequential()
model.add(Dense(150, activation='relu', input_shape = ((df.shape[1]-1),)))
model.add(Dense(150, activation='relu'))
model.add(Dense(y.shape[1], activation='softmax'))
model.fit(X_train, y_train, epochs=100)
and everything else as is, we get:
score, acc = model.evaluate(X_test, y_test, verbose=0)
acc
# 0.9333333373069763
We can do better: use slightly more training data and stratify them, i.e.
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y,
test_size = 0.20, # a few more samples for training
stratify=y)
And with the same model & training epochs you can get a perfect accuracy of 1.0 in the test set:
score, acc = model.evaluate(X_test, y_test, verbose=0)
acc
# 1.0
(Details might differ due to some randomness imposed by default in such experiments).
Adding some dropout might help you improve accuracy. See Tensorflow's documentation for more information.
Essentially how you add a Dropout layer is just very similar to how you added those Dense() layers.
model.add(Dropout(0.2)
Note: The parameter '0.2 implies that 20% of the connections in the layer is randomly omitted to reduce the interdependencies between them, which reduces overfitting.