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DropConnect on MNIST¶
Mask individual weights instead of activations and average several stochastic forward passes at inference.
from __future__ import annotations
import numpy as np
import torch
from torch import nn
from probly.quantification import quantify
from probly.representer import representer
from probly.transformation import dropconnect
from probly_benchmark.data import load_mnist
from examples.utils.model import MLPClassifier
from examples.utils.plotting import plot_mnist_uncertainty
Setup¶
train_loader, test_loader = load_mnist(batch_size=256)
X_test_batches, y_test_batches = zip(*test_loader)
X_test = torch.cat([x.view(-1, 28 * 28) for x in X_test_batches])
y_test = torch.cat(list(y_test_batches))
images_test = (X_test.view(-1, 28, 28) * 255).byte()
Model¶
base_model = MLPClassifier(in_features=28 * 28, hidden_features=256, out_features=10)
dropconnect_model = dropconnect(
base_model,
p=0.1, # per-weight masking probability (kept active at inference)
predictor_type="logit_classifier",
)
Training¶
Standard cross-entropy with mini-batches. Weight masking is applied at every forward pass, both during training and at inference time.
opt = torch.optim.Adam(dropconnect_model.parameters(), lr=1e-3)
dropconnect_model.train()
for _epoch in range(10):
correct, total = 0, 0
for X_batch, y_batch in train_loader:
X_flat = X_batch.view(-1, 28 * 28)
opt.zero_grad()
out = dropconnect_model(X_flat)
nn.functional.cross_entropy(out, y_batch).backward()
opt.step()
correct += (out.detach().argmax(-1) == y_batch).sum().item()
total += len(y_batch)
if correct / total >= 0.97:
break
Uncertainty Quantification¶
dropconnect_model.eval()
rep = representer(dropconnect_model, num_samples=100)
with torch.no_grad():
representation = rep.represent(X_test)
uq = quantify(representation)
_total = uq.total
uncertainty = (
_total.detach().numpy() if isinstance(_total, torch.Tensor) else np.asarray(_total)
)
uncertainty = uncertainty / np.log(2)
if uncertainty.ndim > 1:
uncertainty = uncertainty.sum(axis=-1)
Predictions¶
Average softmax probabilities over multiple stochastic forward passes.
num_mc = 50
with torch.no_grad():
sample_probs = torch.stack(
[dropconnect_model(X_test).softmax(-1) for _ in range(num_mc)]
).numpy() # (num_mc, N, 10)
mean_probs = sample_probs.mean(0)
accuracy = (mean_probs.argmax(-1) == y_test.numpy()).mean() * 100
print(f"Test accuracy: {accuracy:.1f}%")
Test accuracy: 97.4%
Visualization¶
plot = plot_mnist_uncertainty(
images_test,
y_test,
uncertainty,
mean_probs,
title="Top-5 Most Uncertain Test Predictions (DropConnect)",
)
plot.show()

Total running time of the script: (0 minutes 20.733 seconds)