Discrete perceptrons

TL;DR

This paper rigorously analyzes discrete perceptrons, confirming and bounding many predictions from statistical mechanics, and extends the theoretical understanding of their performance.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous mathematical framework for discrete perceptrons, validating and bounding prior statistical mechanics predictions.

Findings

Many statistical mechanics predictions are confirmed as bounds.

The paper establishes rigorous performance bounds for discrete perceptrons.

Results extend the theoretical understanding of discrete perceptrons' capabilities.

Abstract

Perceptrons have been known for a long time as a promising tool within the neural networks theory. The analytical treatment for a special class of perceptrons started in seminal work of Gardner \cite{Gar88}. Techniques initially employed to characterize perceptrons relied on a statistical mechanics approach. Many of such predictions obtained in \cite{Gar88} (and in a follow-up \cite{GarDer88}) were later on established rigorously as mathematical facts (see, e.g. \cite{SchTir02,SchTir03,TalBook,StojnicGardGen13,StojnicGardSphNeg13,StojnicGardSphErr13}). These typically related to spherical perceptrons. A lot of work has been done related to various other types of perceptrons. Among the most challenging ones are what we will refer to as the discrete perceptrons. An introductory statistical mechanics treatment of such perceptrons was given in \cite{GutSte90}. Relying on results of \cite{Gar88}, \cite{GutSte90} characterized many of the features of several types of discrete perceptrons. We in this paper, consider a similar subclass of discrete perceptrons and provide a mathematically rigorous set of results related to their performance. As it will turn out, many of the statistical mechanics predictions obtained for discrete predictions will in fact appear as mathematically provable bounds. This will in a way emulate a similar type of behavior we observed in \cite{StojnicGardGen13,StojnicGardSphNeg13,StojnicGardSphErr13} when studying spherical perceptrons.