{"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/initial-guessing-bias-how-untrained-networks","title":"Initial Guessing Bias: How Untrained Networks Favor Some Classes","arxiv_id":"2306.00809","date":"2023-06-01","proceeding":null,"authors":["Emanuele Francazi","Aurelien Lucchi","Marco Baity-Jesi"],"abstract":"Understanding and controlling biasing effects in neural networks is crucial for ensuring accurate and fair model performance. In the context of classification problems, we provide a theoretical analysis demonstrating that the structure of a deep neural network (DNN) can condition the model to assign all predictions to the same class, even before the beginning of training, and in the absence of explicit biases. We prove that, besides dataset properties, the presence of this phenomenon, which we call \\textit{Initial Guessing Bias} (IGB), is influenced by model choices including dataset preprocessing methods, and architectural decisions, such as activation functions, max-pooling layers, and network depth. Our analysis of IGB provides information for architecture selection and model initialization. We also highlight theoretical consequences, such as the breakdown of node-permutation symmetry, the violation of self-averaging and the non-trivial effects that depth has on the phenomenon.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00809v6","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.00809v6.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":"initial-guessing-bias-how-untrained-networks","repo_url":"https://github.com/emanuelefrancazi/igb-algorithms","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2306.00809","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2306.00809"}},"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":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/emanuelefrancazi/igb-algorithms","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_honours":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"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":1,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"9b94e30e1c1dabea","entry":"ValidTimes","repo":"emanuelefrancazi/igb-algorithms","repo_kind":"official","path":"Dynamics/IGB_on_MLP.py","file_url":"https://github.com/emanuelefrancazi/igb-algorithms/blob/HEAD/Dynamics/IGB_on_MLP.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"9b94e30e1c1dabea"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}