# Coding Neural Network - Dropout

Dropout is a regularization technique. On each iteration, we randomly shut down some neurons (units) on each layer and don’t use those neurons in both forward propagation and back-propagation. Since the units that will be dropped out on each iteration will be random, the learning algorithm will have no idea which neurons will be shut down on every iteration; therefore, force the learning algorithm to spread out the weights and not focus on some specific feattures (units). Moreover, dropout help improving generalization error by:

• Since we drop some units on each iteration, this will lead to smaller network which in turns means simpler network (regularization).
• Can be seen as an approximation to bagging techniques. Each iteration can be viewed as different model since we’re dropping randomly different units on each layer. This means that the error would be the average of errors from all different models (iterations). Therefore, averaging errors from different models especially if those errors are uncorrelated would reduce the overall errors. In the worst case where errors are perfectly correlated, averaging among all models won’t help at all; however, we know that in practice errors have some degree of uncorrelation. As result, it will always improve generalization error.

We can use different probabilities on each layer; however, the output layer would always have keep_prob = 1 and the input layer has high keep_prob such as 0.9 or 1. If a hidden layer has keep_prob = 0.8, this means that; on each iteration, each unit has 80% probablitity of being included and 20% probability of being dropped out.

Dropout is used a lot in computer vision problems because we have a lot of features and not a lot of data. Also, features (pixels) next to each other usually don’t add a lot of information. Therefore, models always suffer from overfitting.

To illustrate how dropout helps us reduce generalization error, we’ll use the same dataset we’ve used in the previous posts. The dataset has images for cats and non-cat. We’ll try to build a neural network to classify if the image has cat or not. Each image is 64 x 64 pixels on RGB scale. Let’s import the data and take a look at the shape as well as a sample of a cat image from the training set.

# Loading packages
import os

import h5py
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import seaborn as sns

# local modules
os.chdir("../scripts/")
from coding_neural_network_from_scratch import (initialize_parameters,
linear_activation_forward,
compute_cost,
linear_activation_backward,
update_parameters,
accuracy)

%matplotlib inline
sns.set_context("notebook")
plt.style.use("fivethirtyeight")
plt.rcParams['figure.figsize'] = (12, 6)

# Import training data
train_dataset = h5py.File("../data/train_catvnoncat.h5")
X_train = np.array(train_dataset["train_set_x"])
Y_train = np.array(train_dataset["train_set_y"])

# Plot a sample image
plt.imshow(X_train[50])
plt.axis("off");

# Import test data
test_dataset = h5py.File("../data/test_catvnoncat.h5")
X_test = np.array(test_dataset["test_set_x"])
Y_test = np.array(test_dataset["test_set_y"])

# Transform data
X_train = X_train.reshape(209, -1).T
X_train = X_train / 255
Y_train = Y_train.reshape(-1, 209)

X_test = X_test.reshape(50, -1).T
X_test = X_test / 255
Y_test = Y_test.reshape(-1, 50)

# print the new shape of both training and test datasets
print("Training data dimensions:")
print("X's dimension: {}, Y's dimension: {}".format(X_train.shape, Y_train.shape))
print("Test data dimensions:")
print("X's dimension: {}, Y's dimension: {}".format(X_test.shape, Y_test.shape))

Training data dimensions:
X's dimension: (12288, 209), Y's dimension: (1, 209)
Test data dimensions:
X's dimension: (12288, 50), Y's dimension: (1, 50)


Now, we’ll write the functions needed to apply dropout on both forward propagation and back-propagation. Note that we’ll utilize the functions we wrote in previous posts such as initialize_parameters.

def drop_out_matrices(layers_dims, m, keep_prob):
np.random.seed(1)
D = {}
L = len(layers_dims)

for l in range(L):
# initialize the random values for the dropout matrix
D[str(l)] = np.random.rand(layers_dims[l], m)
# Convert it to 0/1 to shut down neurons corresponding to each element
D[str(l)] = D[str(l)] < keep_prob[l]
assert(D[str(l)].shape == (layers_dims[l], m))
return D

def L_model_forward(
X, parameters, D, keep_prob, hidden_layers_activation_fn="relu"):
A = X                           # since input matrix A0
A = np.multiply(A, D[str(0)])
A /= keep_prob[0]
caches = []                     # initialize the caches list
L = len(parameters) // 2        # number of layer in the network

for l in range(1, L):
A_prev = A
A, cache = linear_activation_forward(
A_prev, parameters["W" + str(l)], parameters["b" + str(l)],
hidden_layers_activation_fn)
# shut down some units
A = np.multiply(A, D[str(l)])
# scale that value of units to keep expected value the same
A /= keep_prob[l]
caches.append(cache)

AL, cache = linear_activation_forward(
A, parameters["W" + str(L)], parameters["b" + str(L)], "sigmoid")
AL = np.multiply(AL, D[str(L)])
AL /= keep_prob[L]
caches.append(cache)
assert(AL.shape == (1, X.shape[1]))

return AL, caches

def L_model_backward(
AL, Y, caches, D, keep_prob, hidden_layers_activation_fn="relu"):
Y = Y.reshape(AL.shape)
L = len(caches)

# dA for output layer
dAL = np.divide(AL - Y, np.multiply(AL, 1 - AL))
dAL = np.multiply(dAL, D[str(L)])
dAL /= keep_prob[L]

"db" + str(L)] = linear_activation_backward(
dAL, caches[L - 1], "sigmoid")
grads["dA" + str(L - 1)] = np.multiply(
grads["dA" + str(L - 1)], D[str(L - 1)])
grads["dA" + str(L - 1)] /= keep_prob[L - 1]

for l in range(L - 1, 0, -1):
current_cache = caches[l - 1]
"db" + str(l)] = linear_activation_backward(
hidden_layers_activation_fn)

grads["dA" + str(l - 1)] = np.multiply(
grads["dA" + str(l - 1)], D[str(l - 1)])
grads["dA" + str(l - 1)] /= keep_prob[l - 1]

def model_with_dropout(
X, Y, layers_dims, keep_prob, learning_rate=0.01, num_iterations=3000,
print_cost=True, hidden_layers_activation_fn="relu"):
# get number of examples
m = X.shape[1]

# to get consistents output
np.random.seed(1)

# initialize parameters
parameters = initialize_parameters(layers_dims)

# intialize cost list
cost_list = []

for i in range(num_iterations):
# Initialize dropout matrices
D = drop_out_matrices(layers_dims, m, keep_prob)

# compute forward propagation
AL, caches = L_model_forward(
X, parameters, D, keep_prob, hidden_layers_activation_fn)

# compute regularized cost
cost = compute_cost(AL, Y)

AL, Y, caches, D, keep_prob, hidden_layers_activation_fn)

# update parameters

# print cost
if (i + 1) % 100 == 0 and print_cost:
print(f"The cost after {i + 1} iterations : {cost:.4f}.")
# append cost
if i % 100 == 0:
cost_list.append(cost)

# plot the cost curve
plt.plot(cost_list)
plt.xlabel("Iteration (per hundreds)")
plt.ylabel("Cost")
plt.title(f"Cost curve for the learning rate = {learning_rate}")

return parameters


Finally, we’re ready to build our neural network. First, we’ll build one fully connected network without dropout. That is to say, keep_prob = 1. Next, we’ll build another network where keep_prob < 1. Lastly, we’ll compare the generalization error of both networks and see how dropout technique can help us in improving our generalization error.

# setup layers dimensions, number of examples, and keep probabilities list
m = X_train.shape[0]
keep_prob = [1, 1, 1, 1]
layers_dims = [m, 10, 10, 1]

# train NN with no dropout
parameters = model_with_dropout(X_train, Y_train, layers_dims, keep_prob=keep_prob,
learning_rate=0.03, num_iterations=1000,
hidden_layers_activation_fn="relu")

# print the test accuracy
print("The training accuracy rate: {}".format(accuracy(X_train, parameters, Y_train, "relu")[-7:]))
print("The test accuracy rate: {}".format(accuracy(X_test, parameters, Y_test, "relu")[-7:]))

The cost after 100 iterations : 0.6555.
The cost after 200 iterations : 0.6468.
The cost after 300 iterations : 0.6447.
The cost after 400 iterations : 0.6442.
The cost after 500 iterations : 0.6440.
The cost after 600 iterations : 0.6440.
The cost after 700 iterations : 0.6440.
The cost after 800 iterations : 0.6440.
The cost after 900 iterations : 0.6440.
The cost after 1000 iterations : 0.6440.
The training accuracy rate: 65.55%.
The test accuracy rate: 34.00%.

# setup keep probabilities list
keep_prob = [1, 0.5, 0.5, 1]

# train NN with no dropout
parameters = model_with_dropout(X_train, Y_train, layers_dims, keep_prob=keep_prob,
learning_rate=0.03, num_iterations=1000,
hidden_layers_activation_fn="relu")

# print the test accuracy
print("The training accuracy rate: {}".format(accuracy(X_train, parameters, Y_train, "relu")[-7:]))
print("The test accuracy rate: {}".format(accuracy(X_test, parameters, Y_test, "relu")[-7:]))

The cost after 100 iterations : 0.6555.
The cost after 200 iterations : 0.6467.
The cost after 300 iterations : 0.6445.
The cost after 400 iterations : 0.6437.
The cost after 500 iterations : 0.6412.
The cost after 600 iterations : 0.6338.
The cost after 700 iterations : 0.6108.
The cost after 800 iterations : 0.5367.
The cost after 900 iterations : 0.4322.
The cost after 1000 iterations : 0.3114.
The training accuracy rate: 74.16%.
The test accuracy rate: 44.00%.


As the results above showed, the network with dropout improved on test accuracy rate by 30%. Note that this is just an illustrative example to show the effectiveness of the dropout technique. We chose an arbitrary probabilities in this example; however, we can tune the dropout probabilities on each layer to yield the best validation loss and accuracy.

## Conclusion

Dropout is a very effective regularization technique that is used a lot in Convolutional Neural Networks. Below are some takeaways:

• Set keep_prob = 1 when using gradient checking; otherwise, it won’t work.
• Dropout is used only during training. Don’t use it when testing/predicting new examples.
• The lowest the keep_prob $\rightarrow$ the simpler the neural network. As keep_prob decreases, the bias increases and the variance decreases. Therefore, layers with more neurons are expected to have lower keep_prob to avoid overfitting.
• It’s computationally a cheap way to improve generalization error and help resolve overfitting.
• One can tune keep_prob to get the best results out of the task at hand.

The source code that created this post can be found here. The post is inspired by deeplearning.ai courses.