# How to train your draGAN: A task oriented solution to imbalanced classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.10065 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10065/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Nov 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [mixup: Beyond Empirical Risk Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.09412/) (2017)
- [Improved Training of Wasserstein GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00028/) (2017)
- [Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1784/) (2014)
- [AttnGAN: Fine-Grained Text to Image Generation with Attentional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10485/) (2017)
- [Conditional Image Synthesis With Auxiliary Classifier GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.09585/) (2016)
- [Unrolled Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.02163/) (2016)
- [The Principles of Deep Learning Theory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10165/) (2021)
- [Conditional Wasserstein GAN-based Oversampling of Tabular Data for Imbalanced Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.09202/) (2020)
- [Oversampling for Imbalanced Learning Based on K-Means and SMOTE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00837/) (2017)
- [Generative adversarial networks in time series: A survey and taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.11098/) (2021)
- [On Convergence and Stability of GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07215/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The long-standing challenge of building effective classification models for small and imbalanced datasets has seen little improvement since the creation of the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) over 20 years ago. Though GAN based models seem promising, there has been a lack of purpose built architectures for solving the aforementioned problem, as most previous studies focus on applying already existing models. This paper proposes a unique, performance-oriented, data-generating strategy that utilizes a new architecture, coined draGAN, to generate both minority and majority samples. The samples are generated with the objective of optimizing the classification model's performance, rather than similarity to the real data. We benchmark our approach against state-of-the-art methods from the SMOTE family and competitive GAN based approaches on 94 tabular datasets with varying degrees of imbalance and linearity. Empirically we show the superiority of draGAN, but also highlight some of its shortcomings. All code is available on: https://github.com/LeonGuertler/draGAN.