# Domain Generalization by Rejecting Extreme Augmentations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.06670 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06670/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 47 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [Domain-Adversarial Training of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.07818/) (2015)
- [RandAugment: Practical automated data augmentation with a reduced search space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13719/) (2019)
- [Invariant Risk Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02893/) (2019)
- [SpecAugment: A Simple Data Augmentation Method for Automatic Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08779/) (2019)
- [WILDS: A Benchmark of in-the-Wild Distribution Shifts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07421/) (2020)
- [Moment Matching for Multi-Source Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01754/) (2018)
- [Distributionally Robust Neural Networks for Group Shifts: On the Importance of Regularization for Worst-Case Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08731/) (2019)
- [Deep CORAL: Correlation Alignment for Deep Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.01719/) (2016)
- [Deep Hashing Network for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07522/) (2017)
- [In Search of Lost Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01434/) (2020)
- [Deeper, Broader and Artier Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03077/) (2017)
- [Recognition in Terra Incognita](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.04975/) (2018)
- [Domain Generalization with MixStyle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02008/) (2021)
- [SWAD: Domain Generalization by Seeking Flat Minima](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08604/) (2021)
- [Self-Challenging Improves Cross-Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02454/) (2020)
- [Fast AutoAugment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00397/) (2019)
- [Deep Domain-Adversarial Image Generation for Domain Generalisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06054/) (2020)
- [TrivialAugment: Tuning-free Yet State-of-the-Art Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10158/) (2021)
- [Improve Unsupervised Domain Adaptation with Mixup Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00677/) (2020)
- [Simple data balancing achieves competitive worst-group-accuracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14503/) (2021)
- [A Fine-Grained Analysis on Distribution Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.11328/) (2021)
- [Population Based Augmentation: Efficient Learning of Augmentation Policy Schedules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05393/) (2019)
- [Diverse Weight Averaging for Out-of-Distribution Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09739/) (2022)
- [Domain Generalization via Conditional Invariant Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.08479/) (2018)
- [Ensemble of Averages: Improving Model Selection and Boosting Performance in Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.10832/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [PEER pressure: Model-to-Model Regularization for Single Source Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12745/) (2025)
- [FDS: Feedback-guided Domain Synthesis with Multi-Source Conditional Diffusion Models for Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03588/) (2024)
- [Bidirectional Multi-Step Domain Generalization for Visible-Infrared Person Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10782/) (2024)
- [Dealing with the Evil Twins: Improving Random Augmentation by Addressing Catastrophic Forgetting of Diverse Augmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08240/) (2025)
- [High-Rate Mixout: Revisiting Mixout for Robust Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06955/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Data augmentation is one of the most effective techniques for regularizing deep learning models and improving their recognition performance in a variety of tasks and domains. However, this holds for standard in-domain settings, in which the training and test data follow the same distribution. For the out-of-domain case, where the test data follow a different and unknown distribution, the best recipe for data augmentation is unclear. In this paper, we show that for out-of-domain and domain generalization settings, data augmentation can provide a conspicuous and robust improvement in performance. To do that, we propose a simple training procedure: (i) use uniform sampling on standard data augmentation transformations; (ii) increase the strength transformations to account for the higher data variance expected when working out-of-domain, and (iii) devise a new reward function to reject extreme transformations that can harm the training. With this procedure, our data augmentation scheme achieves a level of accuracy that is comparable to or better than state-of-the-art methods on benchmark domain generalization datasets. Code: https://github.com/Masseeh/DCAug