Navigating Noise: A Study of How Noise Influences Generalisation and Calibration of Neural Networks
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Abstract (arXiv)
Enhancing the generalisation abilities of neural networks (NNs) through integrating noise such as MixUp or Dropout during training has emerged as a powerful and adaptable technique. Despite the proven efficacy of noise in NN training, there is no consensus regarding which noise sources, types and placements yield maximal benefits in generalisation and confidence calibration. This study thoroughly explores diverse noise modalities to evaluate their impacts on NN's generalisation and calibration under in-distribution or out-of-distribution settings, paired with experiments investigating the metric landscapes of the learnt representations across a spectrum of NN architectures, tasks, and datasets. Our study shows that AugMix and weak augmentation exhibit cross-task effectiveness in computer vision, emphasising the need to tailor noise to specific domains. Our findings emphasise the efficacy of combining noises and successful hyperparameter transfer within a single domain but the difficulties in transferring the benefits to other domains. Furthermore, the study underscores the complexity of simultaneously optimising for both generalisation and calibration, emphasising the need for practitioners to carefully consider noise combinations and hyperparameter tuning for optimal performance in specific tasks and datasets.
Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 36 of its 58 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Jun 2023.
Builds on
36 of 58 references.
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24 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 1; 2025: 1.
4 papers.
- 2025Staying on the Manifold: Geometry-Aware Noise Injectioncited by 4
- 2023DifAugGAN: A Practical Diffusion-style Data Augmentation for GAN-based Single Image Super-resolutioncited by 1
- 2024Policy Gradient-Driven Noise Maskcited by 1
- 2023The Benefit of Noise-Injection for Dynamic Gray-Box Model Creationcited by 0
- 2025Staying on the Manifold: Geometry-Aware Noise Injection24 Sep 2025
- 2024Policy Gradient-Driven Noise Mask29 Apr 2024
- 2023DifAugGAN: A Practical Diffusion-style Data Augmentation for GAN-based Single Image Super-resolution30 Nov 2023
- 2023The Benefit of Noise-Injection for Dynamic Gray-Box Model Creation2 Oct 2023