{"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/revisiting-disentanglement-in-downstream","title":"Revisiting Disentanglement in Downstream Tasks: A Study on Its Necessity for Abstract Visual Reasoning","arxiv_id":"2403.00352","date":"2024-03-01","proceeding":null,"authors":["Ruiqian Nai","Zixin Wen","Ji Li","Yuanzhi Li","Yang Gao"],"abstract":"In representation learning, a disentangled representation is highly desirable as it encodes generative factors of data in a separable and compact pattern. Researchers have advocated leveraging disentangled representations to complete downstream tasks with encouraging empirical evidence. This paper further investigates the necessity of disentangled representation in downstream applications. Specifically, we show that dimension-wise disentangled representations are unnecessary on a fundamental downstream task, abstract visual reasoning. We provide extensive empirical evidence against the necessity of disentanglement, covering multiple datasets, representation learning methods, and downstream network architectures. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the informativeness of representations is a better indicator of downstream performance than disentanglement. Finally, the positive correlation between informativeness and disentanglement explains the claimed usefulness of disentangled representations in previous works. The source code is available at https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity.git.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00352v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.00352v1.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":"revisiting-disentanglement-in-downstream","repo_url":"https://github.com/richard-coder-nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"tf","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"disentanglement","task_name":"Disentanglement"},{"task_slug":"informativeness","task_name":"Informativeness"},{"task_slug":"representation-learning","task_name":"Representation Learning"},{"task_slug":"visual-reasoning","task_name":"Visual Reasoning"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2403.00352","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2403.00352"}},"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/richard-coder-nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","reach":{"status":"ok"}},{"provenance":"deterministic:regex_extraction","url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"summary":{"ran_honours":1,"ran":8,"unverified":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":10,"ran":9,"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":10,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"4a7888d5b577c6b7","entry":"get_rotation_mat_QR","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/evaluation/evaluate.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/evaluation/evaluate.py","link_basis":"plan_row","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":2,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"4a7888d5b577c6b7"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"3d7054f70c8947a9","entry":"aggregate_json_results","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/utils/results.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/utils/results.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"3d7054f70c8947a9"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"a49a6513cef0d00e","entry":"categorical","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/utils/hyperparams.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/utils/hyperparams.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"a49a6513cef0d00e"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"012fe20e09f03273","entry":"dendrogram_plot","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/visualize/dendrogram.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/visualize/dendrogram.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"012fe20e09f03273"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"3a50ed4b437f3447","entry":"discrete","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/utils/hyperparams.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/utils/hyperparams.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"3a50ed4b437f3447"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"662dfe6c1766283a","entry":"load_aggregated_json_results","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/utils/aggregate_results.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/utils/aggregate_results.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"662dfe6c1766283a"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"6379870483ed42ef","entry":"namespaced_dict","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/utils/results.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/utils/results.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"6379870483ed42ef"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"cd885450ab3ecbb2","entry":"report_merges","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/visualize/dendrogram.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/visualize/dendrogram.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"cd885450ab3ecbb2"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"3504131533494b67","entry":"sweep","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/utils/hyperparams.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/utils/hyperparams.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"3504131533494b67"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"95d623fa8c3eacde","entry":"get_file","repo":"Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity","repo_kind":"official","path":"disentanglement_lib/utils/resources.py","file_url":"https://github.com/Richard-coder-Nai/disentanglement-lib-necessity/blob/HEAD/disentanglement_lib/utils/resources.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":"95d623fa8c3eacde"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}