dimension one

machine learning phenomena through minimalist examples

  • minimal sharpness and l2 norm at stable learning rates, edge of stability at the largest ones

    Jun 2026

    for L(x,y)=(1-xy)^2/2, GD ends near the minimal-sharpness minimizers for all tested stable learning rates. Edge-of-stability behavior appears only near the largest stable learning rates, where those minimizers are also near the edge.

  • a phase portrait of gradient descent on a 1-hidden linear neuron

    May 2026

    for the simple factorized loss (1-xy)^2/2, GD cannot converge to xy=1 without oscillating across it beyond learning rate 1/2, and cannot converge at all beyond learning rate 1

  • proxies for generalization: what survives in 1d when generalization gap is explicit?

    Apr 2026

    in a 1d classification example where the generalization gap is explicit, the failures of common generalization proxies can be understood geometrically: most track sensitivity rather than correctness of the classifier

  • at interpolation, generalization is distance to Bayes

    Mar 2026

    in the same setup as the previous post, the generalization gap turns out to have a simple analytical form: Bayes error plus a disagreement term, computable in one dimension

  • same model, same optimizer -- different generalization

    Feb 2026

    a minimalist reproduction of why generalization cannot be understood without looking at the data

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