{"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/rethinking-the-hyperparameters-for-fine-1","title":"Rethinking the Hyperparameters for Fine-tuning","arxiv_id":"2002.11770","date":"2020-02-19","proceeding":"ICLR 2020 1","authors":["Hao Li","Pratik Chaudhari","Hao Yang","Michael Lam","Avinash Ravichandran","Rahul Bhotika","Stefano Soatto"],"abstract":"Fine-tuning from pre-trained ImageNet models has become the de-facto standard for various computer vision tasks. Current practices for fine-tuning typically involve selecting an ad-hoc choice of hyperparameters and keeping them fixed to values normally used for training from scratch. This paper re-examines several common practices of setting hyperparameters for fine-tuning. Our findings are based on extensive empirical evaluation for fine-tuning on various transfer learning benchmarks. (1) While prior works have thoroughly investigated learning rate and batch size, momentum for fine-tuning is a relatively unexplored parameter. We find that the value of momentum also affects fine-tuning performance and connect it with previous theoretical findings. (2) Optimal hyperparameters for fine-tuning, in particular, the effective learning rate, are not only dataset dependent but also sensitive to the similarity between the source domain and target domain. This is in contrast to hyperparameters for training from scratch. (3) Reference-based regularization that keeps models close to the initial model does not necessarily apply for \"dissimilar\" datasets. Our findings challenge common practices of fine-tuning and encourages deep learning practitioners to rethink the hyperparameters for fine-tuning.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11770v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.11770v1.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":"rethinking-the-hyperparameters-for-fine-1","repo_url":"https://github.com/richardaecn/cvpr18-inaturalist-transfer","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"tf","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"transfer-learning","task_name":"Transfer Learning"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2002.11770","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2002.11770"}},"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/richardaecn/cvpr18-inaturalist-transfer","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"summary":{"unverified":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":0,"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":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"3fe5f08cb1872f05","entry":"optimize_clones","repo":"richardaecn/cvpr18-inaturalist-transfer","repo_kind":"official","path":"slim/deployment/model_deploy.py","file_url":"https://github.com/richardaecn/cvpr18-inaturalist-transfer/blob/HEAD/slim/deployment/model_deploy.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"3fe5f08cb1872f05"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}