Abstract

We present a new algorithm for eliminating excess parameters and improving network generalization after supervised training. The method, "Principal Components Pruning (PCP)", is based on principal component analysis of the node activations of successive layers of the network. It is simple, cheap to implement, and effective. It requires no network retraining, and does not involve calculating the full Hessian of the cost function. Only the weight andthenode activity correlation matrices for each layer of nodes are required. We demonstrate the efficacy of the method on a regression problem using polynomial basis functions, and on an economic time series prediction problem using a two-layer, feedforward network.

Citations