CNN cannot overfit even with large number of epochs

username: emanresu
cooked: <p>Hello!</p>
<p>I have the following code for classification on 2x128x128 pictures, which cannot even overfit at all, however loss tends to zero when applying huge number of epochs (~500).</p>
<p>In case of classification between 15 classes: accuracy on training set goes up until only 60%, accuracy on test set is around 58%.<br>
While in case of 5 classes: these values are 84 and 75 respectively.<br>
(Still cannot overfit even with many epochs and using no regularization.)<br>
I am pretty sure I’m making a rookie mistake, but could not figure it out yet.</p>
<p>Architecture:</p>
<pre><code>nn.Sequential(
        nn.Conv2d(2, 17, kernel_size=(3, 3), stride=(1, 1), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(17, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(17, 32, kernel_size=(4, 4), stride=(2, 2), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(32, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(32, 48, kernel_size=(3, 3), stride=(1, 1), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(48, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(48, 64, kernel_size=(4, 4), stride=(2, 2), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(64, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(64, 96, kernel_size=(3, 3), stride=(1, 1), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(96, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(96, 128, kernel_size=(4, 4), stride=(2, 2), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(128, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(128, 192, kernel_size=(3, 3), stride=(1, 1), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(192, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(192, 256, kernel_size=(4, 4), stride=(2, 2), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(256, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(256, 192, kernel_size=(3, 3), stride=(1, 1), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(192, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Conv2d(192, 128, kernel_size=(4, 4), stride=(2, 2), padding=(1, 1)),
        nn.BatchNorm2d(128, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.AdaptiveAvgPool2d(output_size=2),
        nn.Flatten(start_dim=1, end_dim=-1),
        nn.Dropout(p=0.2, inplace=False),
        nn.Linear(in_features=512, out_features=256, bias=True),
        nn.LeakyReLU(negative_slope=0.01, inplace=True),
        nn.Dropout(p=0.2, inplace=False),
        nn.Linear(in_features=256, out_features=numClasses, bias=True),
        nn.LogSoftmax(dim=1))
</code></pre>
<p>Training:</p>
<pre><code>def TrainModel(model, numEpochs, lossFunction, optimizer, dataSource, saveToFolder, scheduler=None):
epochLossSum = 0.0
counter = 0.0
for epoch in range(numEpochs):
    print("Epoch: ", epoch+1)

    for i, batch in enumerate(dataSource, 0):
        inputs = batch['input']
        labels = batch['label']

        outputs = model(inputs)
        loss = lossFunction(outputs, labels)
        epochLossSum = epochLossSum + loss
        counter = counter + 1
        loss.backward()
        optimizer.step()
        optimizer.zero_grad()
        if scheduler is not None:
            scheduler.step()

    print("Average loss in epoch ", epoch + 1)
    print('%.10f' % (epochLossSum/counter))
    epochLossSum = 0.0
    counter = 0.0

print('Finished Training')
torch.save(model.state_dict(), saveToFolder)
print('Model saved to ', saveToFolder)
</code></pre>
<p>Accuracy check:</p>
<pre><code>def ModelAccuracy(model, trainingData, validationData):
goodTrain = 0.0
badTrain = 0.0
goodVal = 0.0
badVal = 0.0
for i, batch in enumerate(validationData, 0):
    inputs = batch['input']
    labels = batch['label']
    inputs = inputs.unsqueeze(0)
    labels = labels.unsqueeze(0)
    prediction = np.argmax(model(inputs).detach().numpy(), axis=1)
    if(labels.item() == prediction[0]):
        goodVal = goodVal + 1
    else:
        badVal = badVal + 1
print("Accuracy on validation set: ", 100*goodVal/(goodVal+badVal), "%")

for i, batch in enumerate(trainingData, 0):
    inputs = batch['input']
    labels = batch['label']
    inputs = inputs.unsqueeze(0)
    labels = labels.unsqueeze(0)
    prediction = np.argmax(model(inputs).detach().numpy(), axis=1)
    if(labels.item() == prediction[0]):
        goodTrain = goodTrain + 1
    else:
        badTrain = badTrain + 1

print("Accuracy on training set: ", 100*goodTrain/(goodTrain+badTrain), "%")
</code></pre>
<p>And putting these together:</p>
<pre><code>if __name__ == "__main__":

classifier = DHMClassifier(n_classes=numClasses)
classifier = classifier.to(torch.device("cuda"))
classifier = classifier.train()

trainingData = DataAssembler(dataSource, train=True, onCuda=True)
trainingLoader = DataLoader(trainingData, batch_size=10, num_workers=0)

optimizer = optim.Adam(classifier.parameters(), lr=0.0001)
lossFunction = nn.NLLLoss(weight=trainingData.GetBalancerCUDA())
TrainModel(classifier, 500, lossFunction, \
    optimizer, trainingLoader, savingDirectory, scheduler=None)

classifier = classifier.eval()
validationData = DataAssembler(dataSource, train=False, onCuda=False)
EvaluatedModel = DHMClassifier(n_classes=numClasses)
EvaluatedModel.load_state_dict(torch.load(savingDirectory))

EvaluatedModel = EvaluatedModel.to(torch.device("cpu"))
trainingData.DictToCPU()
ModelAccuracy(EvaluatedModel, trainingData, validationData)
</code></pre>
<p>Any help or hints are really appreciated. (I know that some code parts are not very efficient, but that shouldn’t cause problem I believe.)</p>

username: ptrblck
cooked: <p>Unrelated to this issue, but you are accumulating the <code>loss</code> tensor and would thus store the entire computation graph with it here:</p>
<pre><code class="lang-python">epochLossSum = epochLossSum + loss
</code></pre>
<p>If <code>epochLossSum</code> is only used for printing purposes, call <code>.detach()</code> on <code>loss</code> before accumulating it.</p>
<p>I can’t see any obvious mistake in your code, so would recommend to try to overfit a small dataset (e.g. just 10 samples) and check if your model is able to do so by playing around with some hyperparameters.</p>

username: emanresu
cooked: <p>Thank you, that was also a problem indeed.<br>
In the meantime I found the issue, I forgot to shuffle the input.<br>
The DataLoader sets shuffle parameter False by default.</p>

username: J_Johnson
cooked: <ol>
<li>
<p>Even-valued kernel sizes, such as 4, are generally avoided. This is because they have symmetry. Odd-valued kernels are preferred because the lack of symmetry causes there to be a central value, and so tends to be better at providing visual clarity.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>You’re using batchnorm2d but not setting the Conv2d layer biases to False. At best, this is adding extra unnecessary calculations because, for example:</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p><code>4x+3+6 = 4x+9</code></p>
<p>And at worse, you might be causing your first few layers to have vanishing gradients, due to how many sequential layers gradient descent must work through. Batchnorm2d contains a bias, and so the 2 biases back to back are redundant.</p>
<ol start="3">
<li>It’s one big sequential, which means that the gradients might be getting infinitesimally small by the time they back propagate to the first layer. You can address this by either reducing the overall layers, thru including some MaxPool2d layers (2,2 stride, kernel is a popular choice). Or you can add split connections.</li>
</ol>
<p>Your dropout is also quite low, have you tried playing with p=0.4 or 0.5?</p>

username: emanresu
cooked: <p>Those are some pretty good points, I applied them and gave me an additional 6% to test accuracy, so thank you very much for your hints!</p>