What is deep double descent?
hardAnswer
- Test error as a function of model capacity is not monotonically U-shaped: it goes up as capacity crosses the interpolation threshold (train error → 0), then goes down again for extremely overparameterized models.
- Documented in Belkin et al. (2019) and Nakkiran et al. (2020).
- Implication: in the overparameterized regime, bigger models can generalize better despite fitting the training data perfectly.
Check yourself — multiple choice
- Test error is always U-shaped in capacity
- Test error peaks at the interpolation threshold then decreases again for very large models
- Only observed in linear models
- Requires early stopping
Double descent: test error peaks at interpolation, then drops for overparameterized models.
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