NetInitialize

NetInitialize[net]

gives a net in which all uninitialized learnable parameters in net have been given initial values.

NetInitialize[net,All]

gives a net in which all learnable parameters have been given initial values.

Details and Options

  • NetInitialize[net,All] overwrites any existing training or preset learnable parameters in net.
  • NetInitialize typically assigns random values to parameters representing weights and zero to parameters representing biases.
  • The following optional parameters can be included:
  • Method "Kaiming"which initialization method to use
    RandomSeeding1234seeding of pseudorandom number generator
  • Possible settings for Method include:
  • "Kaiming"choose weights to preserve variance of arrays when propagated through layers, with the method introduced by Kaiming He et al. (2015)
    "Xavier"choose weights to preserve variance of arrays when propagated through layers, with the method introduced by Xavier Glorot et al. (2014)
    "Orthogonal"choose weights to be orthogonal matrices
    "Random"choose weights from a given univariate distribution
    "Identity"choose weights so as to preserve components of arrays when propogated through affine layers
  • Suboptions for specific methods can be specified using Method{"method",opt1val1,}.
  • For the methods "Kaiming" and "Xavier", the following suboption is supported:
  • "Distribution""Normal"either "Normal" or "Uniform"
  • For the method "Random", the following suboptions are supported:
  • "Weights"NormalDistribution[0,1]random distribution to use to initialize weight matrices
    "Biases"Nonerandom distribution to use to initialize bias vectors
  • For the method "Identity", the following suboption is supported:
  • "Distribution"NormalDistribution[0,0.01]random distribution used to add noise to the initial identity matrices in order to break symmetries
  • For any suboption that expects a distribution, a numeric value stddev can be specified and is taken to mean NormalDistribution[0,stddev].
  • By default, all methods initialize bias vectors to zero.
  • Possible settings for RandomSeeding include:
  • Automaticautomatically reseed every time the function is called
    Inheriteduse externally seeded random numbers
    seeduse an explicit integer or strings as a seed

Examples

open allclose all

Basic Examples  (1)

Create an uninitialized layer:

Initialize the layer with random weights:

Extract the new initialized weights:

Scope  (1)

Specify "Random" initialization, using normal distributions with a standard deviation of 2 for both weights and biases:

Extract and plot the initialized weights and biases:

Options  (1)

Method  (1)

Define a network:

Initialize the net using the "Xavier" initialization:

Specify that the "Xavier" method will sample from a uniform distribution:

Plot a histogram of the weights in the first layer:

Specify that the "Xavier" method will sample from a normal distribution:

Plot a histogram of the weights in the first layer:

Properties & Relations  (2)

NetTrain will automatically call NetInitialize before training begins. The weights and biases of a simple layer are initialized before training:

Extract the weights and biases after training:

Create a net that maps vectors of length 1 to vectors of length 1:

Initialize the net using the "Identity" method, which results in a net that attempts to preserve the components of arrays as they pass through linear layers:

Visualize the output of the net as a function of its input:

Initializing the net using other methods produces a random linear function:

Possible Issues  (2)

Parameters belonging to certain layers have a fixed initialization method, independent of the Method option in NetInitialize:

By default, NetInitialize uses RandomSeeding1234, which will use the same random seed to initialize the net when NetInitialize is called repeatedly:

Use RandomSeedingAutomatic to ensure that repeated calls produce different initializations:

Neat Examples  (1)

Explore how the magnitude of the values used for the weights and biases affects a simple nonlinear net that maps single values to vectors of length 8:

Wolfram Research (2016), NetInitialize, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/NetInitialize.html (updated 2022).

Text

Wolfram Research (2016), NetInitialize, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/NetInitialize.html (updated 2022).

CMS

Wolfram Language. 2016. "NetInitialize." Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Wolfram Research. Last Modified 2022. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/NetInitialize.html.

APA

Wolfram Language. (2016). NetInitialize. Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Retrieved from https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/NetInitialize.html

BibTeX

@misc{reference.wolfram_2023_netinitialize, author="Wolfram Research", title="{NetInitialize}", year="2022", howpublished="\url{https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/NetInitialize.html}", note=[Accessed: 19-March-2024 ]}

BibLaTeX

@online{reference.wolfram_2023_netinitialize, organization={Wolfram Research}, title={NetInitialize}, year={2022}, url={https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/NetInitialize.html}, note=[Accessed: 19-March-2024 ]}