Accelerating Machine Learning via the Weber-Fechner Law

The Weber-Fechner Law observes that human perception scales as the logarithm of the stimulus. We argue that learning algorithms for human concepts could benefit from the Weber-Fechner Law. Specifically, we impose Weber-Fechner on simple neural networks, with or without convolution, via the logarithmic power series of their sorted output. Our experiments show surprising performance and accuracy on the MNIST data set within a few training iterations and limited computational resources, suggesting that Weber-Fechner can accelerate machine learning of human concepts.