Benign Overfitting in Classification: Provably Counter Label Noise with Larger Models
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Abstract (arXiv)
Studies on benign overfitting provide insights for the success of overparameterized deep learning models. In this work, we examine whether overfitting is truly benign in real-world classification tasks. We start with the observation that a ResNet model overfits benignly on Cifar10 but not benignly on ImageNet. To understand why benign overfitting fails in the ImageNet experiment, we theoretically analyze benign overfitting under a more restrictive setup where the number of parameters is not significantly larger than the number of data points. Under this mild overparameterization setup, our analysis identifies a phase change: unlike in the previous heavy overparameterization settings, benign overfitting can now fail in the presence of label noise. Our analysis explains our empirical observations, and is validated by a set of control experiments with ResNets. Our work highlights the importance of understanding implicit bias in underfitting regimes as a future direction.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 37 of its 57 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2022.
Builds on
37 of 57 references.
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25 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 2; 2025: 1; 2026: 1.
5 papers.
- 2023Understanding and Mitigating the Label Noise in Pre-training on Downstream Taskscited by 27
- 2024Impact of Noisy Supervision in Foundation Model Learningcited by 8
- 2025Shifting the Paradigm: A Diffeomorphism Between Time Series Data Manifolds for Achieving Shift-Invariancy in Deep Learningcited by 5
- 2024Coordinated Sparse Recovery of Label Noisecited by 0
- 2026Generalization Bounds of Stochastic Gradient Descent in Homogeneous Neural Networkscited by 0
- 2026Generalization Bounds of Stochastic Gradient Descent in Homogeneous Neural Networks26 Feb 2026
- 2025Shifting the Paradigm: A Diffeomorphism Between Time Series Data Manifolds for Achieving Shift-Invariancy in Deep Learning27 Feb 2025
- 2024Coordinated Sparse Recovery of Label Noise7 Apr 2024
- 2024Impact of Noisy Supervision in Foundation Model Learning11 Mar 2024
- 2023Understanding and Mitigating the Label Noise in Pre-training on Downstream Tasks29 Sep 2023