Implicit Regularization Leads to Benign Overfitting for Sparse Linear Regression
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Abstract (arXiv)
In deep learning, often the training process finds an interpolator (a solution with 0 training loss), but the test loss is still low. This phenomenon, known as benign overfitting, is a major mystery that received a lot of recent attention. One common mechanism for benign overfitting is implicit regularization, where the training process leads to additional properties for the interpolator, often characterized by minimizing certain norms. However, even for a simple sparse linear regression problem y = β*top x +xi with sparse β^*, neither minimum ℓ1 or ℓ2 norm interpolator gives the optimal test loss. In this work, we give a different parametrization of the model which leads to a new implicit regularization effect that combines the benefit of ℓ1 and ℓ2 interpolators. We show that training our new model via gradient descent leads to an interpolator with near-optimal test loss. Our result is based on careful analysis of the training dynamics and provides another example of implicit regularization effect that goes beyond norm minimization.
Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 37 of its 50 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Feb 2023.
Builds on
37 of 50 references.
References · 37
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25 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 0; 2026: 1.
4 papers.
- 2024Implicit Regularization of Gradient Flow on One-Layer Softmax Attentioncited by 19
- 2024FTMixer: Frequency and Time Domain Representations Fusion for Time Series Modelingcited by 4
- 2026Hard labels sampled from sparse targets mislead rotation invariant algorithmscited by 1
- 2024Implicit Regularization for Multi-label Feature Selectioncited by 0
- 2026Hard labels sampled from sparse targets mislead rotation invariant algorithms21 Mar 2026
- 2024Implicit Regularization for Multi-label Feature Selection18 Nov 2024
- 2024FTMixer: Frequency and Time Domain Representations Fusion for Time Series Modeling24 May 2024
- 2024Implicit Regularization of Gradient Flow on One-Layer Softmax Attention13 Mar 2024