the batch normlization layer do not work (tensorflow) - tensorflow

I implement a network using tensorflow, and the loss is not converged. Then, I get some value in the network, and I find that the BN layer do not work. Please look at the following picture:
We can see that s2 is the result of batch normalization of s1, but the value in s2 is still very large. I don't know what's the problem. Why the value in s2 is so large?
I have updated my code to github. Someone who is interested can test it.

As per the official tensorflow documentation here,
when training, the moving_mean and moving_variance need to be updated.
By default the update ops are placed in tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS, so
they need to be executed alongside the train_op. Also, be sure to add
any batch_normalization ops before getting the update_ops collection.
Otherwise, update_ops will be empty, and training/inference will not
work properly.
For example:
training = tf.placeholder(tf.bool, name="is_training")
# ...
x_norm = tf.layers.batch_normalization(x, training=training)
# ...
update_ops = tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS)
train_op = optimizer.minimize(loss)
train_op = tf.group([train_op, update_ops])
# or, you can also do something like this:
# with tf.control_dependencies(update_ops):
# train_op = optimizer.minimize(loss)
So, it is really important to get the update ops as stated in the tensorflow documentation because in training time the moving variance and the moving mean of the layer have to be updated. If you don’t do this, batch normalization will not work and the network will not train as expected. It is also useful to declare a placeholder to tell the network if it is in training time or inference time, as during test(or inference) time, the mean and the variance are fixed. They are estimated using the previously calculated means and variances of each training batch.

Related

BatchNormalization in Keras

How do I update moving mean and moving variance in keras BatchNormalization?
I found this in tensorflow documentation, but I don't know where to put train_op or how to work it with keras models:
update_ops = tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS)
with tf.control_dependencies(update_ops):
train_op = optimizer.minimize( loss )
No posts I found say what to do with train_op and whether you can use it in model.compile.
You do not need to manually update the moving mean and variances if you are using the BatchNormalization layer. Keras takes care of updating these parameters during training, and to keep them fixed during testing (by using the model.predict and model.evaluate functions, same as with model.fit_generator and friends).
Keras also keeps track of the learning phase so different codepaths run during training and validation/testing.
If you need just update the weights for existing model with some new values then you can do the following:
w = model.get_layer('batchnorm_layer_name').get_weights()
# Order: [gamma, beta, mean, std]
for j in range(len(w[0])):
gamma = w[0][j]
beta = w[1][j]
run_mean = w[2][j]
run_std = w[3][j]
w[2][j] = new_run_mean_value1
w[3][j] = new_run_std_value2
model.get_layer('batchnorm_layer_name').set_weights(w)
There are two interpretations of the question: the first is assuming that the goal is to use high level training api and this question was answered by Matias Valdenegro.
The second - as discussed in the comments - is whether it is possible to use batch normalization with the standard tensorflow optimizer as discussed here keras a simplified tensorflow interface and the section "Collecting trainable weights and state updates". As mentioned there the update ops are accessible in layer.updates and not in tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS, in fact if you have a keras model in tensorflow you can optimize with a standard tensorflow optimizer and batch normalization like this
update_ops = model.updates
with tf.control_dependencies(update_ops):
train_op = optimizer.minimize( loss )
and then use a tensorflow session to fetch the train_op. To distinguish training and evaluation modes of the batch normalization layer you need to feed the
learning phase state of the keras engine (see "Different behaviors during training and testing" on the same tutorial page as given above). This would work for example like this
...
# train
lo, _ = tf_sess.run(fetches=[loss, train_step],
feed_dict={tf_batch_data: bd,
tf_batch_labels: bl,
tensorflow.keras.backend.learning_phase(): 1})
...
# eval
lo = tf_sess.run(fetches=[loss],
feed_dict={tf_batch_data: bd,
tf_batch_labels: bl,
tensorflow.keras.backend.learning_phase(): 0})
I tried this in tensorflow 1.12 and it works with models containing batch normalization. Given my existing tensorflow code and in the light of approaching tensorflow version 2.0 I was tempted to use this approach myself, but given that this approach is not being mentioned in the tensorflow documentation I am not sure this will be supported in the long term and I finally have decided to not use it and to invest a little bit more to change the code to use the high level api.

Model seems to be overfitting with Optimizer.minimize() but not tf.contrib.layers.optimize_loss()

When I create train_op like this:
train_op = tf.contrib.layers.optimize_loss(
loss=loss,
global_step=tf.contrib.framework.get_global_step(),
learning_rate=params['learning_rate'],
optimizer='Adam'
)
I get a working network that performs well on validation and test sets.
If I just use minimize() method like this:
optimizer = tf.train.AdamOptimizer(learning_rate=params['learning_rate'])
train_op = optimizer.minimize(
loss=loss,
global_step=tf.train.get_global_step()
)
I get much worse results (precision, recall, loss) even on the first validation after 1000 steps, and after a while it seems like it completely overfitted (loss on validation is more or less constant and is 100x train loss, but precision and recall crash)
I created a function that is cleaned-up version of contrib one, that differs from straight Optimizer.minimize() in two marked places:
def make_train_op(loss, optimizer, global_step):
with tf.variable_scope(None, "OptimizeLoss", [loss, global_step]):
# ==========================================
# this part is extra comparing to minimize()
update_ops = set(tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS))
if update_ops:
with tf.control_dependencies([update_ops]):
loss = tf.identity(loss)
# ==========================================
gradients = optimizer.calculate_gradients(
loss,
tf.trainable_variables()
)
grad_updates = optimizer.apply_gradients(
gradients,
global_step=global_step,
name="train")
# ==========================================
# so is this one
with tf.control_dependencies([grad_updates]):
train_op = tf.identity(loss)
# ==========================================
return train_op
And validation performs well again. Training in all cases look more or less same (and healthy). Network is relatively straightforward CNN/batchnorm/dropout/maxpool mix with cross-entropy loss.
The way I understand this is that there are some operations that are part of a graph that don't appear as dependencies for loss, but that are needed to calculate gradients. How is that even possible? If this is a normal situation, why aren't those two snippets part of a core? Should I have done something different while building a model to avoid the need for this dependency forcing?
The issue is with batchnorm update operations, and it's actually documented:
Note: when training, the moving_mean and moving_variance need to be updated. By default the update ops are placed in tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS, so they need to be added as a dependency to the train_op. For example:
update_ops = tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS)
with tf.control_dependencies(update_ops):
train_op = optimizer.minimize(loss)

Tensorflow assign the moving_variance and moving_average of tf.contrib.layers.batch_norm

I have a CNN model with some batch normalization layers within it. The batchnorm layer is constructed by tf.contrib.layers.batch_norm. That model works well in basic circumstances. But a problem is that I don't know how to assign the moving_variance and moving_mean of it.
In details, as the officail website describe, the batch norm layer have variance mean scale offset four parameters. The last two are tensorflow variables which I can tackle well. For the last two, even I can get them with tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS)), they are two tensors which I don't know how to assign them. In most cases these two parameters is set during the training phase.
I have also tried tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.VARIABLES), I can get two tensorflow variables named tf.Variable 'BatchNorm/moving_mean and tf.Variable BachNorm/moving_Variance, althougn I can change these two variables's value with tf.assign, but the wierd thing is that the output of batchNorm doesn't change accordingly
Thanks for any suggestions!
From Tensorflow official site:
https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/contrib/layers/batch_norm
Note: when training, the moving_mean and moving_variance need to be updated. By default the update ops are placed in tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS, so they need to be added as a dependency to the train_op. For example:
update_ops = tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.UPDATE_OPS)
with tf.control_dependencies(update_ops):
train_op = optimizer.minimize(loss)

Is it possible to loop through all minibatches in a single tensorflow op using dataset/iterators?

I'm working with tf.data.dataset/iterator mechanism and trying to improve data loading performance. It occurred to me that offloading the entire minibatch loop from Python might help. My data is small enough that storing on CPU or GPU is no problem.
So, Is it possible to loop an optimizer node over a full minibatched epoch within a call to session.run?
The tensor returned by iterator.get_next() is only incremented once per session.run, which would seems to make it impossible to iterate through a dataset of minibatches... but if it could be done, my CPU would only have to touch the Python thread once per epoch.
UPDATE: #muskrat's suggestion to use tf.slice can be used for this purpose. See my subsequent non-answer with a schematic implementation of this using tf.while_loop. However, the question is whether this can be accomplished using dataset/iterators... and I'd still like to know.
From the description it seems that you already have the dataset preloaded as a constant on CPU/GPU, like at this example. That's certainly the first step.
Second, I suggest using tf.slice() to replicate the effect of the minibatch operation. In other words, just manually slice minibatches out of the preloaded constant (your dataset), and you should get the desired behavior. See for example the slice docs or this related post.
If that's not enough detail, please edit your question to include a code example (with mnist or something) and I can give more details.
This "answer" is an implementation of muskrat's tf.slice suggestion with the details of tf.while_loop worked out (with help from How to use tf.while_loop() in tensorflow and https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/while_loop).
Unless your data and model are small enough that you're bottlenecked by Python I/O (like me!), this solution is probably academic.
Advantages:
Trains over minibatches without returning to the Python thread.
Uses only ops that have GPU implementations meaning that the entire graph can be placed in the GPU.
On my small dataset, which is presumably bottlenecked by Python I/O, this solution is twice the speed of my dataset/iteratior (which touches Python once per minibatch) and four times the speed of passing minibatches through feed_dict.
Disadvantages:
tf.while_loop is treacherous. It's challenging to understand when ops inside the loop's body are evaluated and when those they depend on are evaluated, particularly the (thin) official documentation and limited Stack Overflow coverage.
The missing documentation of tf.while_loop is that tensors outside the body of the loop are only evaluated once, even if inner ops depend on them. This means that optimization, model, and loss have to be defined in the loop. This limits flexibility if you'd like to e.g. be able to call validation loss ops between training epochs. Presumably this could be accomplished with tf.cond statements and the appropriate flags passed in via feed_dict. But not nearly as flexible or elegant as the dataset/iterator mechanism in tf.data.
Adding shuffling operations at each Epoch doesn't seem available on GPU.
Here's my schematic code (I've ommitted the variable and model definition for brevity):
def buildModel(info, training_data, training_targets):
graph = tf.Graph()
with graph.as_default():
# numBatches is passed in from Python once per Epoch.
batch_size = tf.placeholder(tf.float32, name = 'batch_size')
# Initializers for loop variables for tf.while_loop
batchCounter = tf.Variable(0, dtype=tf.float32, trainable=False)
lossList = tf.Variable(tf.zeros([0,1]), trainable=False)
# In a full example, I'd normalize my data here. And possibly shuffle
tf_training_data = tf.constant(training_data, dtype=tf.float32)
tf_training_targets = tf.constant(training_targets, dtype=tf.float32)
# For brevity, I'll spare the definitions of my variables. Because tf.Variables
# are essentially treated as globals in the model and are manipulated directly (like with tf.apply)
# they can reside outside runMinibatch, the body of tf.while_loop.
# weights_1 =
# biases_1 =
# etc.
def moreMinibatches(batchCount, lossList):
return (batchCount + 1) * batch_size <= len(training_data)
def runMinibatch(batchCount, lossList):
# These tensors and ops have to be defined inside runMinibatch, otherwise they're not updated as tf.wile_loop loops. This means
# slices, model definition, loss tensor, and training op.
dat_batch = tf.slice(tf_training_data, [tf.cast(batchCounter * batch_size, tf.int32) , 0], [tf.cast(batch_size, tf.int32), -1])
targ_batch = tf.slice(tf_training_targets, [tf.cast(batchCounter * batch_size, tf.int32) , 0], [tf.cast(batch_size, tf.int32), -1])
# Here's where you'd define the model as a function of weights and biases above and dat_batch
# model = <insert here>
loss = tf.reduce_mean(tf.squared_difference(model, targ_batch))
optimizer = tf.train.AdagradOptimizer() # for example
train_op = optimizer.minimize(while_loss, name='optimizer')
# control_dependences ensures that train_op is run before return
# even though the return values don't explicitly depend on it.
with tf.control_dependencies([train_op]):
return batchCount + 1, tf.concat([lossList, [[while_loss]]],0)
# So, the idea is that this trains a full epoch without returning to Python.
trainMinibatches = tf.while_loop(moreMinibatches, runMinibatch, [minibatchCounter, lossList]
shape_invariants=[batchCounter.get_shape(), tf.TensorShape(None)])
return (graph,
{'trainMinibatches' : trainAllMinibatches,
'minibatchCounter' : minibatchCounter,
'norm_loss' : norm_loss,
} )
numEpochs = 100 # e.g.
minibatchSize = 32 #
# training_dataset = <data here>
# training_targets = <targets here>
graph, ops = buildModel(info, training_dataset, training_targets,
minibatch_size)
with tf.Session(graph=graph, config=config) as session:
tf.global_variables_initializer().run()
for i in range(numEpochs):
# This op will train on as all minibatches that fit in the full dataset. finalBatchCount with be the number of
# complete minibatches in the dataset. lossList is a list of each step's minibatches.
finalBatchCount, lossList = session.run(ops['trainAllMinibatches'],
feed_dict={'batch_size:0':minibatchSize})
print('minibatch losses at Epoch', i, ': ', lossList)
I implemented tf.slice() and tf.while_loop approach to vectorize mini-batch suggested above.
The performance was about 1.86 times faster in my case than the mini-batches using feed_dict, but I found there was a problem that the loss values of each epochs were not stabilized.
Then, I changed to tf.random_shuffle the inputs every epoch, the problem was much mitigated. (the performance gain was reduced to 1.68 times)

What does global_step mean in Tensorflow?

In this is tutorial code from TensorFlow website,
could anyone help explain what does global_step mean?
I found on the Tensorflow website written that global step is used count training steps, but I don't quite get what exactly it means.
Also, what does the number 0 mean when setting up global_step?
def training(loss,learning_rate):
tf.summary.scalar('loss',loss)
optimizer = tf.train.GradientDescentOptimizer(learning_rate)
# Why 0 as the first parameter of the global_step tf.Variable?
global_step = tf.Variable(0, name='global_step',trainable=False)
train_op = optimizer.minimize(loss, global_step=global_step)
return train_op
According to Tensorflow doc global_step: increment by one after the variables have been updated. Does that mean after one update global_step becomes 1?
global_step refers to the number of batches seen by the graph. Every time a batch is provided, the weights are updated in the direction that minimizes the loss. global_step just keeps track of the number of batches seen so far. When it is passed in the minimize() argument list, the variable is increased by one. Have a look at optimizer.minimize().
You can get the global_step value using tf.train.global_step().
Also handy are the utility methods tf.train.get_global_step or tf.train.get_or_create_global_step.
0 is the initial value of the global step in this context.
The global_step Variable holds the total number of steps during training across the tasks (each step index will occur only on a single task).
A timeline created by global_step helps us understand know where we are in
the grand scheme, from each of the tasks separately. For instance, the loss and accuracy could be plotted against global_step on Tensorboard.
show you a vivid sample below:
code:
train_op = tf.train.GradientDescentOptimizer(learning_rate=LEARNING_RATE).minimize(loss_tensor,global_step=tf.train.create_global_step())
with tf.Session() as sess:
...
tf.logging.log_every_n(tf.logging.INFO,"np.mean(loss_evl)= %f at step %d",100,np.mean(loss_evl),sess.run(tf.train.get_global_step()))
corresponding print
INFO:tensorflow:np.mean(loss_evl)= 1.396970 at step 1
INFO:tensorflow:np.mean(loss_evl)= 1.221397 at step 101
INFO:tensorflow:np.mean(loss_evl)= 1.061688 at step 201
There are networks, e.g. GANs, that may need two (or more) different steps. Training a GANs with the WGAN specification requires that the steps on the discriminator (or critic) D are more than the ones done on the generator G. In that case, it is usefull to declare different global_steps variables.
Example: (G_lossand D_loss are the loss of the generator and the discriminator)
G_global_step = tf.Variable(0, name='G_global_step', trainable=False)
D_global_step = tf.Variable(0, name='D_global_step', trainable=False)
minimizer = tf.train.RMSPropOptimizer(learning_rate=0.00005)
G_solver = minimizer.minimize(G_loss, var_list=params, global_step=G_global_step)
D_solver = minimizer.minimize(D_loss, var_list=params, global_step=D_global_step)