What does `training=True` mean when calling a TensorFlow Keras model? - tensorflow

In TensorFlow's offcial documentations, they always pass training=True when calling a Keras model in a training loop, for example, logits = mnist_model(images, training=True).
I tried help(tf.keras.Model.call) and it shows that
Help on function call in module tensorflow.python.keras.engine.network:
call(self, inputs, training=None, mask=None)
Calls the model on new inputs.
In this case `call` just reapplies
all ops in the graph to the new inputs
(e.g. build a new computational graph from the provided inputs).
Arguments:
inputs: A tensor or list of tensors.
training: Boolean or boolean scalar tensor, indicating whether to run
the `Network` in training mode or inference mode.
mask: A mask or list of masks. A mask can be
either a tensor or None (no mask).
Returns:
A tensor if there is a single output, or
a list of tensors if there are more than one outputs.
It says that training is a Boolean or boolean scalar tensor, indicating whether to run the Network in training mode or inference mode. But I didn't find any information about this two modes.
In a nutshell, I don't know what is the influence of this argument. And what if I missed this argument when training?

Some neural network layers behave differently during training and inference, for example Dropout and BatchNormalization layers. For example
During training, dropout will randomly drop out units and correspondingly scale up activations of the remaining units.
During inference, it does nothing (since you usually don't want the randomness of dropping out units here).
The training argument lets the layer know which of the two "paths" it should take. If you set this incorrectly, your network might not behave as expected.

Training indicating whether the layer should behave in training mode or in inference mode.
training=True: The layer will normalize its inputs using the mean and variance of the current batch of inputs.
training=False: The layer will normalize its inputs using the mean and variance of its moving statistics, learned during training.
Usually in inference mode training=False, but in some networks such as pix2pix_cGAN‍‍‍‍‍‍ At both times of inference and training, training=True.

Related

Keras: Custom loss function with training data not directly related to model

I am trying to convert my CNN written with tensorflow layers to use the keras api in tensorflow (I am using the keras api provided by TF 1.x), and am having issue writing a custom loss function, to train the model.
According to this guide, when defining a loss function it expects the arguments (y_true, y_pred)
https://www.tensorflow.org/guide/keras/train_and_evaluate#custom_losses
def basic_loss_function(y_true, y_pred):
return ...
However, in every example I have seen, y_true is somehow directly related to the model (in the simple case it is the output of the network). In my problem, this is not the case. How do implement this if my loss function depends on some training data that is unrelated to the tensors of the model?
To be concrete, here is my problem:
I am trying to learn an image embedding trained on pairs of images. My training data includes image pairs and annotations of matching points between the image pairs (image coordinates). The input feature is only the image pairs, and the network is trained in a siamese configuration.
I am able to implement this successfully with tensorflow layers and train it sucesfully with tensorflow estimators.
My current implementations builds a tf Dataset from a large database of tf Records, where the features is a dictionary containing the images and arrays of matching points. Before I could easily feed these arrays of image coordinates to the loss function, but here it is unclear how to do so.
There is a hack I often use that is to calculate the loss within the model, by means of Lambda layers. (When the loss is independent from the true data, for instance, and the model doesn't really have an output to be compared)
In a functional API model:
def loss_calc(x):
loss_input_1, loss_input_2 = x #arbirtray inputs, you choose
#according to what you gave to the Lambda layer
#here you use some external data that doesn't relate to the samples
externalData = K.constant(external_numpy_data)
#calculate the loss
return the loss
Using the outputs of the model itself (the tensor(s) that are used in your loss)
loss = Lambda(loss_calc)([model_output_1, model_output_2])
Create the model outputting the loss instead of the outputs:
model = Model(inputs, loss)
Create a dummy keras loss function for compilation:
def dummy_loss(y_true, y_pred):
return y_pred #where y_pred is the loss itself, the output of the model above
model.compile(loss = dummy_loss, ....)
Use any dummy array correctly sized regarding number of samples for training, it will be ignored:
model.fit(your_inputs, np.zeros((number_of_samples,)), ...)
Another way of doing it, is using a custom training loop.
This is much more work, though.
Although you're using TF1, you can still turn eager execution on at the very beginning of your code and do stuff like it's done in TF2. (tf.enable_eager_execution())
Follow the tutorial for custom training loops: https://www.tensorflow.org/tutorials/customization/custom_training_walkthrough
Here, you calculate the gradients yourself, of any result regarding whatever you want. This means you don't need to follow Keras standards of training.
Finally, you can use the approach you suggested of model.add_loss.
In this case, you calculate the loss exaclty the same way I did in the first answer. And pass this loss tensor to add_loss.
You can probably compile a model with loss=None then (not sure), because you're going to use other losses, not the standard one.
In this case, your model's output will probably be None too, and you should fit with y=None.

Implementing stochastic forward passes in part of a neural network in Keras?

my problem is the following:
I am working on an object detection problem and would like to use dropout during test time to obtain a distribution of outputs. The object detection network consists of a training model and a prediction model, which wraps around the training model. I would like to perform several stochastic forward passes using the training model and combine these e.g. by averaging the predictions in the prediction wrapper. Is there a way of doing this in a keras model instead of requiring an intermediate processing step using numpy?
Note that this question is not about how to enable dropout during test time
def prediction_wrapper(model):
# Example code.
# Arguments
# model: the training model
regression = model.outputs[0]
classification = model.outputs[1]
predictions = # TODO: perform several stochastic forward passes (dropout during train and test time) here
avg_predictions = # TODO: combine predictions here, e.g. by computing the mean
outputs = # TODO: do some processing on avg_predictions
return keras.models.Model(inputs=model.inputs, outputs=outputs, name=name)
I use keras with a tensorflow backend.
I appreciate any help!
The way I understand, you're trying to average the weight updates for a single sample while Dropout is enabled. Since dropout is random, you would get different weight updates for the same sample.
If this understanding is correct, then you could create a batch by duplicating the same sample. Here I am assuming that the Dropout is different for each sample in a batch. Since, backpropagation averages the weight updates anyway, you would get your desired behavior.
If that does not work, then you could write a custom loss function and train with a batch-size of one. You could update a global counter inside your custom loss function and return non-zero loss only when you've averaged them the way you want it. I don't know if this would work, it's just an idea.

TensorFlow softmax_crossentropy_with logits: are "labels" also trained (if differentiable)?

The softmax cross-entropy with logits loss function is used to reduce the difference between the logits and labels provided to the function. Typically, the labels are fixed for supervised learning and the logits are adapted. But what happens when the labels come from a differentiable source, e.g., another network? Do both networks, i.e., the "logits network" and the "labels network" get trained by the subsequent optimizer, or does this loss function always treat the labels as fixed?
TLDR: Does tf.nn.softmax_cross_entropy_with_logits() also provide gradients for the labels (if they are differentiable), or are they always considered fixed?
Thanks!
You need to use tf.softmax_cross_entropy_with_logits_v2 to get gradients with respect to labels.
The gradient is calculated from loss provided to the optimizer, if the "labels" are coming from another trainable network, then yes, these will be modified, since they influence the loss. The correct way of using another networks outputs for your own is to define it as untrainable, or make a list of all variables you want to train and pass them to the optimizer explicitly.

How to cancel BP in some layers in tensorflow?

when I try to fine-tune a VGG network, I only want to update the weights after 5th convolution layers ,in caffe , we can cancel BP in configure file. What should I do in tensorflow ? thanks !
Just use tf.stop_gradient() on the input of your 5th layer. Tensorflow will not backpropagate the error below. tf.stop_gradient() is an operation that acts as the identity function in the forward direction, but stops the gradient in the backward direction.
From documentation:
tf.stop_gradient
Stops gradient computation.
When executed in a graph, this op outputs its input tensor as-is.
When building ops to compute gradients, this op prevents the
contribution of its inputs to be taken into account. Normally, the
gradient generator adds ops to a graph to compute the derivatives of a
specified 'loss' by recursively finding out inputs that contributed to
its computation. If you insert this op in the graph it inputs are
masked from the gradient generator. They are not taken into account
for computing gradients.
Otherwise you can use optimizer.minimize(loss, variables_of_fifth_layer). Here you are running backpropagation and updating only on the variables of your 5th layer.
For a fast selection of the variables of interest you could:
Define as trainable=False all the variables that you don't want to update, and use variables_of_fifth_layer=tf.trainable_variables().
Divide layers by defining specific scopes and then variables_of_fifth_layer = tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.TRAINABLE_VARIABLES,"scope/of/fifth/layer")

What is the difference between model.fit() an model.evaluate() in Keras?

I am using Keras with TensorFlow backend to train CNN models.
What is the between model.fit() and model.evaluate()? Which one should I ideally use? (I am using model.fit() as of now).
I know the utility of model.fit() and model.predict(). But I am unable to understand the utility of model.evaluate(). Keras documentation just says:
It is used to evaluate the model.
I feel this is a very vague definition.
fit() is for training the model with the given inputs (and corresponding training labels).
evaluate() is for evaluating the already trained model using the validation (or test) data and the corresponding labels. Returns the loss value and metrics values for the model.
predict() is for the actual prediction. It generates output predictions for the input samples.
Let us consider a simple regression example:
# input and output
x = np.random.uniform(0.0, 1.0, (200))
y = 0.3 + 0.6*x + np.random.normal(0.0, 0.05, len(y))
Now lets apply a regression model in keras:
# A simple regression model
model = Sequential()
model.add(Dense(1, input_shape=(1,)))
model.compile(loss='mse', optimizer='rmsprop')
# The fit() method - trains the model
model.fit(x, y, nb_epoch=1000, batch_size=100)
Epoch 1000/1000
200/200 [==============================] - 0s - loss: 0.0023
# The evaluate() method - gets the loss statistics
model.evaluate(x, y, batch_size=200)
# returns: loss: 0.0022612824104726315
# The predict() method - predict the outputs for the given inputs
model.predict(np.expand_dims(x[:3],1))
# returns: [ 0.65680361],[ 0.70067143],[ 0.70482892]
In Deep learning you first want to train your model. You take your data and split it into two sets: the training set, and the test set. It seems pretty common that 80% of your data goes into your training set and 20% goes into your test set.
Your training set gets passed into your call to fit() and your test set gets passed into your call to evaluate(). During the fit operation a number of rows of your training data are fed into your neural net (based on your batch size). After every batch is sent the fit algorithm does back propagation to adjust the weights in your neural net.
After this is done your neural net is trained. The problem is sometimes your neural net gets overfit which is a condition where it performs well for the training set but poorly for other data. To guard against this situation you run the evaluate() function to send new data (your test set) through your neural net to see how it performs with data it has never seen. There is no training occurring, this is purely a test. If all goes well then the score from training is similar to the score from testing.
fit(): Trains the model for a given number of epochs (this is for training time, with the training dataset).
predict(): Generates output predictions for the input samples (this is for somewhere between training and testing time).
evaluate(): Returns the loss value & metrics values for the model in test mode (this is for testing time, with the testing dataset).
While all the above answers explain what these functions : fit(), evaluate() or predict() do however more important point to keep in mind in my opinion is what data you should use for fit() and evaluate().
The most clear guideline that I came across in Machine Learning Mastery and particular quote in there:
Training set: A set of examples used for learning, that is to fit the parameters of the classifier.
Validation set: A set of examples used to tune the parameters of a classifier, for example to choose the number of hidden units in a neural network.
Test set: A set of examples used only to assess the performance of a fully-specified classifier.
: By Brian Ripley, page 354, Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks, 1996
You should not use the same data that you used to train(tune) the model (validation data) for evaluating the performance (generalization) of your fully trained model (evaluate).
The test data used for evaluate() should be unseen/not used for training(fit()) in order to be any reliable indicator of model evaluation (for generlization).
For Predict() you can use just one or few example(s) that you choose (from anywhere) to get quick check or answer from your model. I don't believe it can be used as sole parameter for generalization.
One thing which was not mentioned here, I believe needs to be specified. model.evaluate() returns a list which contains a loss figure and an accuracy figure. What has not been said in the answers above, is that the "loss" figure is the sum of ALL the losses calculated for each item in the x_test array. x_test would contain your test data and y_test would contain your labels. It should be clear that the loss figure is the sum of ALL the losses, not just one loss from one item in the x_test array.
I would say the mean of losses incurred from all iterations, not the sum. But sure, that's the most important information here, otherwise the modeler would be slightly confused.