{"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/spade-sparsity-guided-debugging-for-deep","title":"SPADE: Sparsity-Guided Debugging for Deep Neural Networks","arxiv_id":"2310.04519","date":"2023-10-06","proceeding":null,"authors":["Arshia Soltani Moakhar","Eugenia Iofinova","Elias Frantar","Dan Alistarh"],"abstract":"It is known that sparsity can improve interpretability for deep neural networks. However, existing methods in the area either require networks that are pre-trained with sparsity constraints, or impose sparsity after the fact, altering the network's general behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate, for the first time, that sparsity can instead be incorporated into the interpretation process itself, as a sample-specific preprocessing step. Unlike previous work, this approach, which we call SPADE, does not place constraints on the trained model and does not affect its behavior during inference on the sample. Given a trained model and a target sample, SPADE uses sample-targeted pruning to provide a \"trace\" of the network's execution on the sample, reducing the network to the most important connections prior to computing an interpretation. We demonstrate that preprocessing with SPADE significantly increases the accuracy of image saliency maps across several interpretability methods. Additionally, SPADE improves the usefulness of neuron visualizations, aiding humans in reasoning about network behavior. Our code is available at https://github.com/IST-DASLab/SPADE.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.04519v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.04519v2.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":"spade-sparsity-guided-debugging-for-deep","repo_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"learning-theory","task_name":"Learning Theory"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"pruning","method_name":"Pruning"},{"method_slug":"spade","method_name":"SPADE"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2310.04519","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2310.04519"}},"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/ist-daslab/spade","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"summary":{"ran":2,"ran_draft_wrong":2,"ran_honours":1,"unverified":4},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":9,"ran":5,"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":9,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"fb20ab9ea97277a1","entry":"batch_sparsegpt","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/BatchSparseGPT.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/BatchSparseGPT.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":"fb20ab9ea97277a1"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"2a80220dabcb742a","entry":"conv1x1","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/ResNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/ResNet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"OUTPUT_MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"deterministic","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"2a80220dabcb742a"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"600ff2c45e0de056","entry":"conv3x3","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/ResNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/ResNet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"OUTPUT_MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"deterministic","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"600ff2c45e0de056"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"4cdb28a41994affd","entry":"hessian","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/BatchSparseGPT.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/BatchSparseGPT.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":"4cdb28a41994affd"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"251e368f5f9b12f5","entry":"safe_divide","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/LRP/layers.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/LRP/layers.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"251e368f5f9b12f5"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"19a22f01cee3edae","entry":"conv1x1","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/LRP/resnet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/LRP/resnet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","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":"19a22f01cee3edae"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"c930c4c4b347fdeb","entry":"conv3x3","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/LRP/resnet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/LRP/resnet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","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":"c930c4c4b347fdeb"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"f01df247baafc560","entry":"resnet50","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/ResNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/ResNet.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":"f01df247baafc560"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"c5c8b7f48875df43","entry":"resnet50","repo":"ist-daslab/spade","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/LRP/resnet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ist-daslab/spade/blob/HEAD/src/LRP/resnet.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":"c5c8b7f48875df43"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}