The Dimension Strikes Back with Gradients: Generalization of Gradient Methods in Stochastic Convex Optimization

We study the generalization performance of gradient methods in the fundamental stochastic convex optimization setting, focusing on its dimension dependence. First, for full-batch gradient descent (GD) we give a construction of a learning problem in dimension $d=O(n^2)$, where the canonical version of GD (tuned for optimal performance of the empirical risk) trained with $n$ training examples converges, with constant probability, to an approximate empirical risk minimizer with $\Omega(1)$ population excess risk. Our bound translates to a lower bound of $\Omega (\sqrt{d})$ on the number of training examples required for standard GD to reach a non-trivial test error, answering an open question raised by Feldman (2016) and Amir, Koren, and Livni (2021b) and showing that a non-trivial dimension dependence is unavoidable. Furthermore, for standard one-pass stochastic gradient descent (SGD), we show that an application of the same construction technique provides a similar $\Omega(\sqrt{d})$ lower bound for the sample complexity of SGD to reach a non-trivial empirical error, despite achieving optimal test performance. This again provides an exponential improvement in the dimension dependence compared to previous work (Koren, Livni, Mansour, and Sherman, 2022), resolving an open question left therein.

Tight Risk Bounds for Gradient Descent on Separable Data

We study the generalization properties of unregularized gradient methods applied to separable linear classification -- a setting that has received considerable attention since the pioneering work of Soudry et al. (2018). We establish tight upper and lower (population) risk bounds for gradient descent in this setting, for any smooth loss function, expressed in terms of its tail decay rate. Our bounds take the form $\Theta(r_{\ell,T}^2 / \gamma^2 T + r_{\ell,T}^2 / \gamma^2 n)$, where $T$ is the number of gradient steps, $n$ is size of the training set, $\gamma$ is the data margin, and $r_{\ell,T}$ is a complexity term that depends on the (tail decay rate) of the loss function (and on $T$). Our upper bound matches the best known upper bounds due to Shamir (2021); Schliserman and Koren (2022), while extending their applicability to virtually any smooth loss function and relaxing technical assumptions they impose. Our risk lower bounds are the first in this context and establish the tightness of our upper bounds for any given tail decay rate and in all parameter regimes. The proof technique used to show these results is also markedly simpler compared to previous work, and is straightforward to extend to other gradient methods; we illustrate this by providing analogous results for Stochastic Gradient Descent.

Stability vs Implicit Bias of Gradient Methods on Separable Data and Beyond

An influential line of recent work has focused on the generalization properties of unregularized gradient-based learning procedures applied to separable linear classification with exponentially-tailed loss functions. The ability of such methods to generalize well has been attributed to the their implicit bias towards large margin predictors, both asymptotically as well as in finite time. We give an additional unified explanation for this generalization and relate it to two simple properties of the optimization objective, that we refer to as realizability and self-boundedness. We introduce a general setting of unconstrained stochastic convex optimization with these properties, and analyze generalization of gradient methods through the lens of algorithmic stability. In this broader setting, we obtain sharp stability bounds for gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent which apply even for a very large number of gradient steps, and use them to derive general generalization bounds for these algorithms. Finally, as direct applications of the general bounds, we return to the setting of linear classification with separable data and establish several novel test loss and test accuracy bounds for gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent for a variety of loss functions with different tail decay rates. In some of these case, our bounds significantly improve upon the existing generalization error bounds in the literature.