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Errorback Propagation

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Errorback Propagation

Documents

Uploaded by

realmex7max5g
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© © All Rights Reserved
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## Error Backpropagation

### Introduction

Error backpropagation, often simply referred to as backpropagation, is a fundamental algorithm in


the training of artificial neural networks. It efficiently computes the gradient of the loss function with
respect to each weight by applying the chain rule, which enables the use of gradient descent
optimization.

### How Backpropagation Works

Backpropagation involves two main steps: the forward pass and the backward pass.

1. **Forward Pass**: Compute the output of the neural network by passing the input data through
each layer.

2. **Backward Pass**: Compute the gradient of the loss function with respect to each weight in the
network by propagating the error backward through the network.

### Detailed Steps

1. **Initialization**: Initialize the weights and biases of the neural network, typically with small
random values.

2. **Forward Pass**:

- Input data \( x \) is passed through the network layer by layer.

- For each layer, compute the activation \( a^{(l)} \) and the pre-activation \( z^{(l)} \):

\[

Z^{(l)} = W^{(l)} a^{(l-1)} + b^{(l)}

\]

\[

A^{(l)} = \sigma(z^{(l)})

\]

Where \( W^{(l)} \) and \( b^{(l)} \) are the weights and biases for layer \( l \), \( \sigma \) is the
activation function, and \( a^{(0)} = x \).

- The output \( \hat{y} \) is produced at the final layer.

3. **Compute Loss**: Calculate the loss \( L \) using a loss function, such as mean squared error
(MSE) for regression or cross-entropy for classification.
4. **Backward Pass**:

- Compute the gradient of the loss with respect to the output of the network.

- Propagate the error backward through the network using the chain rule to compute gradients
with respect to each weight and bias.

- For the output layer, compute the error term \( \delta \) as:

\[

\delta^{(L)} = \nabla_a L \odot \sigma’(z^{(L)})

\]

Where \( L \) is the loss function, \( \nabla_a L \) is the gradient of the loss with respect to the
activation, and \( \sigma’ \) is the derivative of the activation function.

- For each preceding layer, propagate the error backward:

\[

\delta^{(l)} = (W^{(l+1)})^T \delta^{(l+1)} \odot \sigma’(z^{(l)})

\]

- Compute gradients for weights and biases:

\[

\nabla_{W^{(l)}} L = \delta^{(l)} (a^{(l-1)})^T

\]

\[

\nabla_{b^{(l)}} L = \delta^{(l)}

\]

5. **Update Weights**: Use gradient descent or another optimization algorithm to update the
weights and biases:

\[

W^{(l)} \leftarrow W^{(l)} - \eta \nabla_{W^{(l)}} L

\]

\[

B^{(l)} \leftarrow b^{(l)} - \eta \nabla_{b^{(l)}} L

\]

Where \( \eta \) is the learning rate.

### Advantages
- **Efficiency**: Backpropagation efficiently computes gradients using the chain rule, making it
feasible to train large neural networks.

- **Flexibility**: It can be used with various network architectures and activation functions.

- **Scalability**: Capable of handling networks with many layers (deep learning).

### Disadvantages

- **Sensitivity to Hyperparameters**: Requires careful tuning of learning rate, initialization, and


other hyperparameters.

- **Vanishing/Exploding Gradients**: Gradients can become very small or very large in deep
networks, hindering learning.

- **Local Minima**: May get stuck in local minima or saddle points in the loss landscape.

### Applications

Backpropagation is the backbone of many neural network applications, including:

- **Image Recognition**: Training convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for image classification.

- **Natural Language Processing**: Training recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and transformers for
tasks like language translation and sentiment analysis.

- **Reinforcement Learning**: Training agents to learn optimal policies through neural network
function approximators.

### Example

Consider training a neural network to classify handwritten digits from the MNIST dataset. During
training, each image is fed forward through the network to compute the predicted class probabilities.
The loss (e.g., cross-entropy) is computed based on the difference between the predicted and true
labels. Backpropagation then computes the gradients of the loss with respect to each weight, and
the weights are updated using gradient descent to minimize the loss.

### Conclusion

Error backpropagation is a cornerstone of neural network training. By systematically computing


gradients and updating weights, it enables the efficient training of complex models, driving
advancements in numerous fields, from computer vision to natural language processing.

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