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i am trying to understand MC dropout by implementing variational dense layers such as in this link (except I am doing it on Matlab), and so I first try to verify that my model can regress without adding dropout or L2regularization, but my model keep averaging instead of regressing and I don't understand why.

Blue points are data, smooth line is the target, and straight line is the prediction...

I am using a model with 15 hidden layers with 100 neurons each, followed by relu activations, which should be complicated enough for this problem, so why is it underfitting when I haven't even added any regularization?

here is how I generate my data :

x= normrnd(6,1,[1,50]);
y = normrnd(cos(3.*x) ./ (abs(x) + 1.),0.04) +5;

And I am using a learning rate of 0.01 with sgdm optimizer. Loss is simply the mean squared error.

edit: as to bring more detail, here is the important code I used to obtain the model:

function [dlnet] = getUncertaintyModel()

dropout_proba = 0.05;

%droplayers are not yet added, so they are commented
layers = [
    featureInputLayer(1,"Name","input");
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc1")
    reluLayer("Name","relu1")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop1")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc2")
    reluLayer("Name","relu2")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop2")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc3")
    reluLayer("Name","relu3")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop3")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc4")
    reluLayer("Name","relu4")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop4")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc5")
    reluLayer("Name","relu5")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop5")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc6")
    reluLayer("Name","relu6")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop6")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc7")
    reluLayer("Name","relu7")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop7")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc8")
    reluLayer("Name","relu8")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop8")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc9")
    reluLayer("Name","relu9")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop9")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc10")
    reluLayer("Name","relu10")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop10")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc11")
    reluLayer("Name","relu11")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop11")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc12")
    reluLayer("Name","relu12")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop12")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc13")
    reluLayer("Name","relu13")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop13")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc14")
    reluLayer("Name","relu14")
    %dropoutLayer(dropout_proba,"Name","drop14")
    fullyConnectedLayer(100,"Name","fc15")
    reluLayer("Name","relu15")
    fullyConnectedLayer(1,"Name","fc16")
    
    ];

    reslgraph = layerGraph(layers);
    
    dlnet = dlnetwork(reslgraph);


end

As for the training, I use a custom training from the Matlab tutorial, and start it with this script

close all;
clear all;


%data
x= normrnd(6,1,[1,50]);
y = normrnd(cos(3.*x) ./ (abs(x) + 1.),0.03) +5;

%target
n = linspace(4,8);
n_r = cos(3.*n) ./ (abs(n) + 1.) +5;
expected = [n;n_r];

%plot
figure('Name','data');
hAxe = gca;
hold on
scatter(hAxe,x,y)
plot(hAxe,n,n_r)
hold off    

data = [x;y];
dlnet = getUncertaintyModel();

minibatchsize=20;
epochs=150;
initialLearnRate=0.01;

%start of training
 net = customTrainUncertaintyModel(dlnet,data,initialLearnRate,epochs,minibatchsize, expected);

%test data
xt=linspace(3,9);

arrxt = arrayDatastore(xt');

mbq = minibatchqueue(arrxt,...
     'MiniBatchSize',1,...
     'MiniBatchFcn',@preprocessUncertaintyMiniBatchPredictors,...
     'MiniBatchFormat',{'CB'},...
     'OutputEnvironment','auto');
 
 [YPred, means,var] = uncertaintyModelPredictions(net,mbq)
 
%plot of target/data/test prediction
figure('Name','res');
hold on
hAxe = gca;
 scatter(hAxe,x,y)
 plot(hAxe,n,n_r)
 errorbar(hAxe,xt,extractdata(means),extractdata(var),'Color',[1;0;0]);
% errorbar(hAxe,xt,means,var,'Color',[1;0;0]);
hold off

main training loop in uncertaintyModelPredictions function:

%parameters for sgdm update
velocity = [];
momentum = 0.9;

arr = arrayDatastore(data');
mbq = minibatchqueue(arr,...
     'MiniBatchSize',miniBatchSize,...
     'MiniBatchFcn',@preprocessUncertaintyMiniBatchPredictors,...
     'MiniBatchFormat',{'SSB'},...
     'OutputEnvironment','auto');
    for epoch = 1:numberOfEpochs
        shuffle(mbq);

 dsInputs = arrayDatastore(expected');
 mbqInputs = minibatchqueue(dsInputs,...
     'MiniBatchSize',miniBatchSize,...
     'MiniBatchFcn',@preprocessUncertaintyMiniBatchPredictors,...
     'MiniBatchFormat',{'SSB'},...
     'OutputEnvironment','auto');


% Loop over epochs.
for epoch = 1:numberOfEpochs
    shuffle(mbq);
    batchIndex = 0;
    
    % Loop over mini-batches.
    while hasdata(mbq)
        
        iteration = iteration + 1;
        
        batchIndex = batchIndex + 1;
        
        %extract batches from mbq
        dlData = next(mbq);
        dltempx = dlData(:,1,:);
        dltempy = dlData(:,2,:);
        dlx = dlarray(dltempx(:)','CB');
        dly = dlarray(dltempy(:)','CB');
        
       %compute gradients
       [gradients,state,loss,Ypred] = dlfeval(@uncertaintyModelGradients,dlnet,dlx,dly);
        %update state of network
        dlnet.State = state;

        learnRate = initialLearnRate;


        % Update the network parameters using the SGDM optimizer.
         [dlnet,velocity] = sgdmupdate(dlnet,gradients,velocity,learnRate,momentum);
        
        
    end
    
    reset(mbqInputs);
 
    %prediction to visualise how the model is doing on training data
    [preds] = uncertaintyModelQuickPredictions(dlnet,mbqInputs);
    scatter(haxes(2),data(1,:),data(2,:));
    hold on
    plot(haxes(2),expected(1,:),preds);
    hold off
    
    
end

and lastly here is my function to compute gradients:

function [gradients,state,loss,dlYPred] = uncertaintyModelGradients(dlnet,dlX,Y)
%compute gradients
[dlYPred,state] = forward(dlnet,dlX);
%loss
loss = mse(dlYPred,Y);

%computing
gradients = dlgradient(dlarray(loss),dlnet.Learnables);

 loss = double(gather(extractdata(loss)));

end
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  • $\begingroup$ I'm not a Matlab user but you'd more likely to get useful answers if you'd provide a reprex (stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example). $\endgroup$
    – Igor F.
    Commented Apr 9, 2021 at 16:12
  • $\begingroup$ Does the result shown in your plot arise from your implementation of MC dropout? Or is it produced by some other network? What is its architecture? We have a number of suggestions here stats.stackexchange.com/questions/352036/… but it's not clear if this is a duplicate or not. $\endgroup$
    – Sycorax
    Commented Apr 9, 2021 at 16:15
  • $\begingroup$ I have added the important code for clarity, I hope its not too much $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 9, 2021 at 17:40
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ This network has many layers. When you train the model using 1 hidden layer, do you observe the same problem? When you have no dropout at all, do you observe the same problem? $\endgroup$
    – Sycorax
    Commented Apr 9, 2021 at 18:20

1 Answer 1

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Maybe you have too many layers. Try 2 or 3 layers instead of 15 and see what happens.

I've noticed that if I give my neural nets too many layers, then they will fail to learn any relationship between the input and the output, and will instead simply output a constant value. The easiest solution is to use fewer layers.

The problem could also be solved by designing the neural net differently (maybe feed the input into every layer instead of just the first layer) or by initializing the neural net differently. I don't know enough to be able to give detailed advice about that.

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