How to chose number of hidden layers

username: TheOraware
cooked: <p>Hi ,</p>
<p>I have almost 300,000 records with mixed of categorical and numerical features. For most of categorical variable where cardinality is greater than 2 are embedded into 50% of those unique values , i defined  layers and neurons arbitrarily as follows for classification problem 1 or 0, based on following layers and neurons i am getting loss (Cross Entropy) 0.52656052014033 at 100th epochs</p>
<p>My question are</p>
<ol>
<li>Is there anything wrong with my code?</li>
<li>Is there any technique like Grid Search which i can use to chose optimal number of hidden layers, and neurons in each hidden layer?</li>
</ol>
<pre><code class="lang-auto">testNet(
  (embeddings): ModuleList(
    (0): Embedding(115, 8)
    (1): Embedding(119, 10)
    (2): Embedding(113, 7)
    (3): Embedding(120, 10)
    (4): Embedding(184, 42)
    (5): Embedding(116, 8)
    (6): Embedding(151, 26)
    (7): Embedding(161, 31)
    (8): Embedding(119, 10)
    (9): Embedding(399, 50)
  )
  (lin1): Linear(in_features=213, out_features=90, bias=True)
  (lin2): Linear(in_features=90, out_features=85, bias=True)
  (lin3): Linear(in_features=85, out_features=80, bias=True)
  (lin4): Linear(in_features=80, out_features=75, bias=True)
  (lin5): Linear(in_features=75, out_features=70, bias=True)
  (lin6): Linear(in_features=70, out_features=60, bias=True)
  (lin7): Linear(in_features=60, out_features=50, bias=True)
  (lin8): Linear(in_features=50, out_features=40, bias=True)
  (lin9): Linear(in_features=40, out_features=30, bias=True)
  (lin10): Linear(in_features=30, out_features=20, bias=True)
  (lin11): Linear(in_features=20, out_features=10, bias=True)
  (lin12): Linear(in_features=10, out_features=5, bias=True)
  (lin13): Linear(in_features=5, out_features=2, bias=True)
  (bn1): BatchNorm1d(11, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn2): BatchNorm1d(90, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn3): BatchNorm1d(85, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn4): BatchNorm1d(80, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn5): BatchNorm1d(75, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn6): BatchNorm1d(70, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn7): BatchNorm1d(60, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn8): BatchNorm1d(50, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn9): BatchNorm1d(40, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn10): BatchNorm1d(30, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn11): BatchNorm1d(20, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn12): BatchNorm1d(10, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (bn13): BatchNorm1d(5, eps=1e-05, momentum=0.1, affine=True, track_running_stats=True)
  (emb_drop): Dropout(p=0.6, inplace=False)
  (drops): Dropout(p=0.3, inplace=False)
)
epoch : 10,training loss : 0.6801770955721538
epoch : 20,training loss : 0.5797973778088887
epoch : 30,training loss : 0.548956808312734
epoch : 40,training loss : 0.5404320967992147
epoch : 50,training loss : 0.5338565409978231
epoch : 60,training loss : 0.5300635928471883
epoch : 70,training loss : 0.529638019879659
epoch : 80,training loss : 0.5281008475780488
epoch : 90,training loss : 0.525910607846578
epoch : 100,training loss : 0.52656052014033
</code></pre>
<p>Following are my code</p>
<pre><code class="lang-auto">class testNet(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, emb_dims, n_cont):
        super().__init__()

        self.embeddings = nn.ModuleList([nn.Embedding(categories+100, size) for categories,size in emb_dims])
        no_of_embs = sum(e.embedding_dim for e in self.embeddings) #length of all embeddings combined
   
        self.n_emb, self.n_cont = no_of_embs, n_cont
        self.lin1 = nn.Linear(self.n_emb + self.n_cont,90)
        self.lin2 = nn.Linear(90, 85)
        self.lin3 = nn.Linear(85, 80)
        self.lin4 = nn.Linear(80, 75)
        self.lin5 = nn.Linear(75, 70)
        self.lin6 = nn.Linear(70, 60)
        self.lin7 = nn.Linear(60, 50)
        self.lin8 = nn.Linear(50, 40)
        self.lin9 = nn.Linear(40, 30)
        self.lin10 = nn.Linear(30, 20)
        self.lin11 = nn.Linear(20, 10)        
        self.lin12 = nn.Linear(10, 5)        
        self.lin13 = nn.Linear(5, 2)                
            

        self.bn1 = nn.BatchNorm1d(self.n_cont)
        self.bn2 = nn.BatchNorm1d(90)
        self.bn3 = nn.BatchNorm1d(85)
        self.bn4 = nn.BatchNorm1d(80)
        self.bn5 = nn.BatchNorm1d(75)
        self.bn6 = nn.BatchNorm1d(70)
        self.bn7 = nn.BatchNorm1d(60)
        self.bn8 = nn.BatchNorm1d(50)
        self.bn9 = nn.BatchNorm1d(40)
        self.bn10 = nn.BatchNorm1d(30)
        self.bn11 = nn.BatchNorm1d(20)
        self.bn12 = nn.BatchNorm1d(10)
        self.bn13 = nn.BatchNorm1d(5)        

        self.emb_drop = nn.Dropout(0.6)
        self.drops    = nn.Dropout(0.3)

    def forward(self, x_cat, x_cont):
  
        x = [e(x_cat[:,i]) for i,e in enumerate(self.embeddings)]
        x = torch.cat(x, 1)
        
        x = self.emb_drop(x)
        # batch normalization over continous features
        x2 = self.bn1(x_cont)
        # concatenate both embedding and continous feature , here 1 means dim 
        # the dimension over which the tensors are concatenated we are concatenating columns
        x = torch.cat([x, x2], 1)
        #x = F.relu(self.lin1(x))
        m = nn.LeakyReLU(0.01)
        x = m(self.lin1(x))
        
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn2(x)
        #x = F.relu(self.lin2(x))
        x = m(self.lin2(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn3(x)
        x = self.lin3(x)
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn4(x)
        x = m(self.lin4(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn5(x)
        x = m(self.lin5(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn6(x)
        x = m(self.lin6(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn7(x)
        x = m(self.lin7(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn8(x)
        x = m(self.lin8(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn9(x)
        x = m(self.lin9(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn10(x)        
        
        x = m(self.lin10(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn11(x)

        x = m(self.lin11(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn12(x)        
        
        x = m(self.lin12(x))
        x = self.drops(x)
        x = self.bn13(x)        
 
       return x
</code></pre>
<p>Training function</p>
<pre><code class="lang-auto">def get_optimizer(model, lr = 0.001, wd = 0.0):
    parameters = filter(lambda p: p.requires_grad, model.parameters())
    optim = torch_optim.Adam(parameters, lr=lr, weight_decay=wd)
    return optim


def init_weights(m):
    if type(m) == nn.Linear:
        nn.init.xavier_uniform_(m.weight)
        
        if m.bias is not None:
            torch.nn.init.zeros_(m.bias)
            
criterion = nn.CrossEntropyLoss()
to_device(criterion, device)

def train_model(model, optim, train_dl):
    model.train()
    total    = 0
    sum_loss = 0
    output   = 0
    
    for cat, cont, y in train_dl:
        batch = y.shape[0]
        
        output = model(cat, cont)
        _,pred = torch.max(output,1)
        
        loss = criterion(output, y)
        optim.zero_grad()
        loss.backward()
        optim.step()
        total += batch
        sum_loss += batch*(loss.item())
    return sum_loss/total,pred


def train_loop(model, epochs, lr, wd=0.0):
    optim = get_optimizer(model, lr = lr, wd = wd)
    for epoch in range(epochs): 
       
        loss,pred = train_model(model, optim, train_dl)
        if (epoch+1) % 10 ==0:
            print(f'epoch : {epoch+1},training loss : {loss}')
            
def class_imbalance_sampler(labels):
    class_count = np.array([len(np.where(labels.cpu().detach().numpy()==t)[0]) for t in np.unique(labels.cpu().detach().numpy())])
    print(class_count)
    weight = 1. / class_count
    samples_weight = np.array([weight[t] for t in labels.cpu().detach().numpy()])
    samples_weight = torch.from_numpy(samples_weight)
    sampler = WeightedRandomSampler(samples_weight.type('torch.DoubleTensor'), len(samples_weight))
    return sampler            

y = torch.from_numpy(y_tr.to_numpy(np.int)).to(device)
sampler = class_imbalance_sampler(y)

batch_size = 512*2
train_dl = DataLoader(train_ds, batch_size=batch_size,sampler=sampler)
train_dl = DeviceDataLoader(train_dl, device)

model = testNet(embedding_sizes,11)
model.apply(init_weights)
to_device(model, device)
print(model)

from collections import defaultdict
opt = torch.optim.Adam(model.parameters(), lr=1e-2)

train_loop(model, epochs=100, lr=0.001)
</code></pre>

username: eqy
cooked: <p>There are a few things that are strange with the current model architecture. Usually the embedding size of the intermediate layers is not monotonically decreasing in MLPs. You might consider projecting the input to a larger dimension first (e.g., 1024) and using a shallower network (e.g., just 3-4 layers) to begin with. Additionally, models beyond a certain depth typically have residual connections (e.g., ResNets and Transfomers), so the lack of residual connections may be an issue with so many linear layers.</p>
<p>As for searching for the model architecture, the issue is this usually very expensive, so randomized approaches are preferred over techniques like grid search. A reasonable heuristic with limited computational resources is to start with a much simpler model (e.g., fewer layers, fewer bells and whistles such as dropout) and to grow the model in width or  depth until things stop improving.</p>

username: TheOraware
cooked: <p><a class="mention" href="/u/eqy">@eqy</a> thanks for your suggestion and it sounds great to use resnet , i tried to find its implementation , i have deep fully connected layer not CNN , lot of its use case i found using Resnet in CNN but not in fully connected layer (i assume mine is fully connected layer). Could you please share some naive implementation using fully connected layer?</p>
<p>As you said Transfomers is it type of Resnet as well?<br>
Another question  the embedding size of the intermediate layers is not monotonically decreasing in MLPs what does it mean please?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>

username: eqy
cooked: <p>So rather than using the ResNet architecture directly you can still take inspiration from the architecture by adding things like residual connections. If you take a look at the <code>BasicBlock</code> in ResNet you can try a variation of the architecture but with fully connecter layers rather than conv layers (the important part is the use of <code>identity</code> to add the original input back to the output which is the residual connection).</p>
<p>Transformers are not ResNets but they are just another example of an architecture that uses a residual connection.</p>
<p>Typically the size of the model embedding is grown from the input layers but in this case all of your layer sizes have dimension smaller than the input. So I just mean that usually his dimension is much larger in the MLP.</p>

username: TheOraware
cooked: <p><a class="mention" href="/u/eqy">@eqy</a> thanks for your support - i will use your suggestion and implement it</p>
<p>Quick question can i use CNN for tabular data , i mean non image data?</p>

username: eqy
cooked: <p>If there is some kind of sequence to the tabular data (e.g., a time series) then CNNs can work, but usually CNNs are only used when there is some kind of locality (spatial or temporal).</p>

username: TheOraware
cooked: <p><a class="mention" href="/u/eqy">@eqy</a> suppose i have some synthetically generated data but not sure whether it has some kind of locality or not, is there any statistical measures which can be used on these data to find whether it has locality (spatial/temporal) or not?</p>