---
_id: '6569'
abstract:
- lang: eng
text: 'Knowledge distillation, i.e. one classifier being trained on the outputs
of another classifier, is an empirically very successful technique for knowledge
transfer between classifiers. It has even been observed that classifiers learn
much faster and more reliably if trained with the outputs of another classifier
as soft labels, instead of from ground truth data. So far, however, there is no
satisfactory theoretical explanation of this phenomenon. In this work, we provide
the first insights into the working mechanisms of distillation by studying the
special case of linear and deep linear classifiers. Specifically, we prove a
generalization bound that establishes fast convergence of the expected risk of
a distillation-trained linear classifier. From the bound and its proof we extract
three keyfactors that determine the success of distillation: data geometry – geometric
properties of the datadistribution, in particular class separation, has an immediate
influence on the convergence speed of the risk; optimization bias– gradient descentoptimization
finds a very favorable minimum of the distillation objective; and strong monotonicity–
the expected risk of the student classifier always decreases when the size of
the training set grows.'
article_processing_charge: No
author:
- first_name: Phuong
full_name: Bui Thi Mai, Phuong
id: 3EC6EE64-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
last_name: Bui Thi Mai
- first_name: Christoph
full_name: Lampert, Christoph
id: 40C20FD2-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
last_name: Lampert
orcid: 0000-0001-8622-7887
citation:
ama: 'Phuong M, Lampert C. Towards understanding knowledge distillation. In: Proceedings
of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning. Vol 97. ML Research
Press; 2019:5142-5151.'
apa: 'Phuong, M., & Lampert, C. (2019). Towards understanding knowledge distillation.
In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning
(Vol. 97, pp. 5142–5151). Long Beach, CA, United States: ML Research Press.'
chicago: Phuong, Mary, and Christoph Lampert. “Towards Understanding Knowledge Distillation.”
In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning,
97:5142–51. ML Research Press, 2019.
ieee: M. Phuong and C. Lampert, “Towards understanding knowledge distillation,”
in Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning,
Long Beach, CA, United States, 2019, vol. 97, pp. 5142–5151.
ista: 'Phuong M, Lampert C. 2019. Towards understanding knowledge distillation.
Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning. ICML: International
Conference on Machine Learning vol. 97, 5142–5151.'
mla: Phuong, Mary, and Christoph Lampert. “Towards Understanding Knowledge Distillation.”
Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning, vol.
97, ML Research Press, 2019, pp. 5142–51.
short: M. Phuong, C. Lampert, in:, Proceedings of the 36th International Conference
on Machine Learning, ML Research Press, 2019, pp. 5142–5151.
conference:
end_date: 2019-06-15
location: Long Beach, CA, United States
name: 'ICML: International Conference on Machine Learning'
start_date: 2019-06-10
date_created: 2019-06-20T18:23:03Z
date_published: 2019-06-13T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2023-10-17T12:31:38Z
day: '13'
ddc:
- '000'
department:
- _id: ChLa
file:
- access_level: open_access
checksum: a66d00e2694d749250f8507f301320ca
content_type: application/pdf
creator: bphuong
date_created: 2019-06-20T18:22:56Z
date_updated: 2020-07-14T12:47:33Z
file_id: '6570'
file_name: paper.pdf
file_size: 686432
relation: main_file
file_date_updated: 2020-07-14T12:47:33Z
has_accepted_license: '1'
intvolume: ' 97'
language:
- iso: eng
month: '06'
oa: 1
oa_version: Published Version
page: 5142-5151
publication: Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning
publication_status: published
publisher: ML Research Press
quality_controlled: '1'
scopus_import: '1'
status: public
title: Towards understanding knowledge distillation
type: conference
user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
volume: 97
year: '2019'
...