{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/delving-into-variance-transmission-and","title":"Delving into Variance Transmission and Normalization: Shift of Average Gradient Makes the Network Collapse","arxiv_id":"2103.11590","date":"2021-03-22","proceeding":null,"authors":["Yuxiang Liu","Jidong Ge","Chuanyi Li","Jie Gui"],"abstract":"Normalization operations are essential for state-of-the-art neural networks and enable us to train a network from scratch with a large learning rate (LR). We attempt to explain the real effect of Batch Normalization (BN) from the perspective of variance transmission by investigating the relationship between BN and Weights Normalization (WN). In this work, we demonstrate that the problem of the shift of the average gradient will amplify the variance of every convolutional (conv) layer. We propose Parametric Weights Standardization (PWS), a fast and robust to mini-batch size module used for conv filters, to solve the shift of the average gradient. PWS can provide the speed-up of BN. Besides, it has less computation and does not change the output of a conv layer. PWS enables the network to converge fast without normalizing the outputs. This result enhances the persuasiveness of the shift of the average gradient and explains why BN works from the perspective of variance transmission. The code and appendix will be made available on https://github.com/lyxzzz/PWSConv.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.11590v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.11590v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"delving-into-variance-transmission-and","repo_url":"https://github.com/lyxzzz/PWSConv","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"persuasiveness","task_name":"Persuasiveness"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"batch-normalization","method_name":"Batch Normalization"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2103.11590","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2103.11590"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"deterministic:regex_extraction","url":"https://github.com/lyxzzz/PWSConv","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran":1,"unverified":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":2,"ran":1,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":2,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"fc26cdc5c669270d","entry":"PWSConv","repo":"lyxzzz/PWSConv","repo_kind":"official","path":"modules/utils/pws_layer.py","file_url":"https://github.com/lyxzzz/PWSConv/blob/HEAD/modules/utils/pws_layer.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":"deterministic","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"fc26cdc5c669270d"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"a58121a07e508c0e","entry":"pws_init","repo":"lyxzzz/PWSConv","repo_kind":"official","path":"modules/utils/pws_layer.py","file_url":"https://github.com/lyxzzz/PWSConv/blob/HEAD/modules/utils/pws_layer.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"a58121a07e508c0e"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}