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The Power of Depth for Feedforward Neural Networks

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arxiv 1512.03965 v4 pith:GOP36NZV submitted 2015-12-12 cs.LG cs.NEstat.ML

classification cs.LGcs.NEstat.ML
keywords feedforwardnetworksneuraldepthfunctionslayerresultwidth
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abstract

We show that there is a simple (approximately radial) function on $\reals^d$, expressible by a small 3-layer feedforward neural networks, which cannot be approximated by any 2-layer network, to more than a certain constant accuracy, unless its width is exponential in the dimension. The result holds for virtually all known activation functions, including rectified linear units, sigmoids and thresholds, and formally demonstrates that depth -- even if increased by 1 -- can be exponentially more valuable than width for standard feedforward neural networks. Moreover, compared to related results in the context of Boolean functions, our result requires fewer assumptions, and the proof techniques and construction are very different.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. A Measure-Theoretic Analysis of Reasoning: Structural Generalization and Approximation Limits

    cs.LG 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Applies optimal transport to bound OOD generalization error in Transformers via Lipschitz continuity and TC^0 circuit depth lower bounds for Dyck-k backtracking, supported by evaluations on 54 configurations.

  2. Towards a Comparative Framework for Compositional AI Models

    cs.CL 2025-06 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A categorical framework for compositional generalisation is applied to DisCoCirc models, showing quantum circuits outperform neural networks on systematicity while neural models overfit more.

  3. Iterate to Accelerate: A Unified Framework for Iterative Reasoning and Feedback Convergence

    cs.LG 2025-02 reject novelty 4.0 of 10

    The paper claims a unified O(1/t^2) acceleration theorem and a feedback-versus-feedforward separation, but the proof steps are invalid and the main results are false as stated.

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