DIfferent optimization with different TF versions - tensorflow

I'm trying to train a convolutional neural network with keras and Tensorflow version 2.6, also I did it with Tensorflow version 1.11. I think that I did the migration okey (two neural networks converged) but when I see the results they are very different, worst in TF2.6, I used an optimizer Adam for both cases with the same hyperparameters (learning_rate = 0.001) but the optimization in the loss function in TF1.11 is better than in TF2.6
I'm trying to find out where the differences could be. What things must be taken into account when we work with differents TF versions? Can have important numerical differences? I know that in TF1.x the default mode is graph and in TF2 the default is eager, I don't know if this could bring different behavior in the training.
It surprises me how much the loss function is reduced in the first epochs reaching a lower value at the end of the training.

you understand that is correct they are working in different working modes eager and graph but the loss Fn is defined by how much change of value to required optimized pointed calculated by your or configured method.
You cannot directly be compared one model training history to another directly, running it several time you experience TF 1 is faster and smaller in the number of losses in the loss Fn that is needed to review the changelog Changlog
Loss Fn are updated, the graph is the powerful technique we know but TF 2.x supports access of the value at its level, why you have easy delegated methods such as callback, dynamic FNs, and working update value runtime. ( Trends to understand and experiments for student or user compared by both versions on the same tasks )
Symetrics in methods not create different results.

Related

Function CNN model written in Keras 2.2.4 not learning in TensorFlow or Keras 2.4

I am dealing with an object detection problem and using a model which is actually functioning (its results have been published on a paper and I have the original code). Originally, the code was written with Keras 2.2.4 without importing TensorFlow and trained and tested on the same dataset that I am using at the moment. However, when I try to run the same model with TensorFlow 2.x it just won't learn a thing.
I have tried importing everything from TensorFlow 2.4, but I have the same problem if I import everything (layers, models, optimizers...) from Keras 2.4. And I have tried to do so on two different devices, both using a GPU. Namely, what is happening is that the loss function decreases ridiculously fast, but the accuracy won't increase a bit (or, if it does, it gets stuck around 10% or smth). Also, every now and then this happens from an epoch to the next one:
Loss undergoes HUGE jumps between consecutive epochs, and all this without any changes in accuracy
I have tried to train the network on another dataset (had to change the last layers in order to match the required dimensions) and the model seemed to be learning in a normal way, i.e. the accuracy actually increases and the loss doesn't reach 0.0x in one epoch.
I can't post the script, but the model is an Encoder-Decoder network: consecutive Convolutions with increasing number of filters reduce the dimensions of the image, and a specular path of Transposed Convolutions restores the original dimensions. So basically the network only contains:
Conv2D
Conv2DTranspose
BatchNormalization
Activation("relu")
Activation("sigmoid")
concatenate
6 is used to put together outputs from parallel paths or distant layers; 3 and 4 are used after every Conv or ConvTranspose; 5 is only used as final activation function, i.e. as output layer.
I think the problem is pretty generic and I am honestly surprised that I couldn't find a single question about it. What could be happening here? The problem must have something to do with TF/Keras versions, but I can't find any documentation about it and I have been trying to change so many things but nothing changes. It's crazy because if I didn't know that the model works I would try to rewrite it from scratch so I am afraid that this problem may occurr with a new network and I won't be able to understand whether it's the libraries or the model itself.
Thank you in advance! :)
EDIT
Code snippets:
Convolutional block:
encoder1 = Conv2D(filters=first_layer_channels, kernel_size=2, strides=2)(input)
encoder1 = BatchNormalization()(encoder1)
encoder1 = Activation('relu')(encoder1)
Decoder
decoder1 = Conv2DTranspose(filters=first_layer_channels, kernel_size=2, strides=2)(encoder4)
decoder1 = BatchNormalization()(decoder1)
decoder1 = Activation('relu')(decoder1)
Final layers:
final = Conv2D(filters=total, kernel_size=1)(decoder4)
final = BatchNormalization()(final)
Last_Conv = Activation('sigmoid')(final)
The task is human pose estimation: the network (which, I recall, works on this specific task with Keras 2.2.4) has to predict twenty binary maps containing the positions of specific keypoints.

Is there a way to retrieve the weights from a GPflow GPR model?

Is there a way to retrieve the weights from a GPflow GPR model?
I do not necessarily need the explicit weights. However, I have two issues that may be solved using the weights:
I would like to compile and send a trained model to a third party. I
would like to do this without sending the training data and without
the third party having access to the training data.
I would like to be able to predict new mean values without
calculating new variances. Currently predict_f calculates both the
mean and the variance, but I only use the mean. I believe I could
speed up my prediction significantly if I didn't calculate the
variance.
I could resolve both of these issues if I could retrieve the weights from the GPR model after training. However, if it is possible to resolve these tasks without ever dealing with explicit weights, that would be even better.
It's not entirely clear what you mean by "explicit weights", but if you mean alpha = Kxx^{-1} y where Kxx is the evaluation of k(x,x') and y is the vector of observation targets, then you can get that by using the Posterior object (see https://github.com/GPflow/GPflow/blob/develop/gpflow/posteriors.py), which you get by calling posterior = model.posterior(). You can then access posterior.alpha.
Re 1.: However, for predictions you still need to be able to compute Kzx the covariance between new test points and the training points, so you will also need to provide the training locations and kernel hyperparameters.
This also means that you cannot rely on this to keep your training data secret, as the third party could simply compute Kxx instead of Kzx and then get back y = Kxx # alpha. You can avoid sharing exact (x,y) training set pairs by using a sparse approximation (this would remove "individual identifiability" at least). But I still wouldn't rely on it for privacy.
Re 2.: The Posterior object already provides much faster predictions; if you only ask for full_cov=False (marginal variances, the default), then you're at worst about a factor ~3 or so slower than predicting just the mean (in practice, I would guesstimate less than 1.5x as slow). As of GPflow 2.3.0, there is no implementation within GPflow of predicting the mean only.

What does stateful mean in tensorflow metrics in my case?

I don't really understand the explanation of a stateful metric here: Keras metrics with TF backend vs tensorflow metrics
Now, if I split my evaluation data in batches and for each batch I use tf.metrics.precision for the precision, does it mean that the previous variables (counter false positives etc. ) are used for the calculation in the next batch? That would be really bad, since I want the single evaluations for each batch (that is why I do the split!)
If this is the case how can I reset the variables for each batch.
I need the single values from each batch for a mean afterwards.
The reason why tf.metrics.Precision and the like (Recall, etc) store true/false positive is because we do not want to estimate them batch-wise (unlike Accuracy or Loss, etc). The original implementation of Precision in keras (noted, not tf.keras) did exactly what you described (single evaluations for each batch and then aggregate afterward) but was later removed in version 2.0.0 because this way of computing global metric is "more misleading than helpful" (https://github.com/keras-team/keras/issues/5794).
But you may still do what you want to do, you can subclass tf.metrics.Metric and implement the logic of Precision in update_state method. The Metric API doc on Tensorflow has an example of custom Metrics. https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/keras/metrics/Metric
I hope this is helpful!

Tensorflow input pipeline

I have an input pipeline where samples are generated on fly. I use keras and custom ImageDataGenerator and corresponding Iterator to get samples in memory.
Under assumption that keras in my setup is using feed_dict (and that assumption is a question to me) I am thinking of speeding things up by switching to raw tensorflow + Dataset.from_generator().
Here I see that suggested solution for input pipelines that generate data on fly in the most recent Tensorflow is to use Dataset.from_generator().
Questions:
Does keras with Tensorflow backend use feed_dict method?
If I switch to raw tensorflow + Dataset.from_generator(my_sample_generator) will that cut feed_dict memory copy overhead and buy me performance?
During predict (evaluation) phase apart from batch_x, batch_y I have also opaque index vector from my generator output. That vector corresponds to sample ids in the batch_x. Does that mean that I'm stuck with feed_dict approach for predict phase because I need that extra batch_z output from iterator?
The new tf.contrib.data.Dataset.from_generator() can potentially speed up your input pipeline by overlapping the data preparation with training. However, you will tend to get the best performance by switching over to TensorFlow ops in your input pipeline wherever possible.
To answer your specific questions:
The Keras TensorFlow backend uses tf.placeholder() to represent compiled function inputs, and feed_dict to pass arguments to a function.
With the recent optimizations to tf.py_func() and feed_dict copy overhead, I suspect the amount of time spent in memcpy() will be the same. However, you can more easily use Dataset.from_generator() with Dataset.prefetch() to overlap the training on one batch with preprocessing on the next batch.
It sounds like you can define a separate iterator for the prediction phase. The tf.estimator.Estimator class does something similar by instantiating different "input functions" with different signatures for training and evaluation, then building a separate graph for each role.
Alternatively, you could add a dummy output to your training iterator (for the batch_z values) and switch between training and evaluation iterators using a "feedable iterator".

Strange behavior of loss function in an implementation of TensorFlow matrix factorization model for recommendation system

Current implementation of recommendation system use TF 1.8 and WALS algorithm. The model was trained using self.fit(input_fn=input_fn) and ML Engine with run time version 1.8. Data set was formed following example using tensorflow.train.Example(...) Extraction from training logs shown below.
The fit was performed with some default parameters. The loss value did decreased on second evaluation. However loss did not changed after that. The final Root weighted squared error (rwse) in this training became 0.126.
Hyperparameter tuning was performed later and the best parameter set was used in the following training. The result of that training is shown below.
Tree things to note here. First, the loss value at the beginning is lower than at later evaluation steps. Low value in the beginning most likely due to choice of parameters from the results of hyperparameter tuning. Increase of the loss value later on looks strange. Second, it’s unchanged loss value after second evaluation. This pattern remains the same while self.fit(input_fn=input_fn) is used for model training. Third, the final rwse in this training became 0.487 while during hyperparameter tuning with the same parameter set rwse=0.015.
The question is if anyone observed something similar? Is it possible to improve performance of the algorithm using WALSMatrixFactorization class and self.fit(input_fn=input_fn, steps=train_steps)?? Thanks in advance for your help.