# Second-Order Taylor Series Terms In Gradient Descent

My machine learning textbook states the following when discussing second-order Taylor series approximations in the context of Gradient descent:

The (directional) second derivative tells us how well we can expect a gradient descent step to perform. We can make a second-order Taylor series approximation to the function $$f(\mathbf{x})$$ around the current point $$\mathbf{x}^{(0)}$$:

$$f(\mathbf{x}) \approx f(\mathbf{x}^{(0)}) + (\mathbf{x} - \mathbf{x}^{(0)})^T \mathbf{g} + \dfrac{1}{2} (\mathbf{x} - \mathbf{x}^{(0)})^T\mathbf{H}(\mathbf{x} - \mathbf{x}^{(0)}),$$

where $$\mathbf{g}$$ is the gradient and $$\mathbf{H}$$ is the Hessian at $$\mathbf{x}^{(0)}$$. If we use a learning rate of $$\epsilon$$, then the new point $$\mathbf{x}$$ will be given by $$\mathbf{x}^{(0)} - \epsilon \mathbf{g}$$. Substituting this into our approximation, we obtain

$$f(\mathbf{x}^{(0)} - \epsilon \mathbf{g}) \approx f(\mathbf{x}^{(0)}) - \epsilon \mathbf{g}^T \mathbf{g} + \dfrac{1}{2} \epsilon^2 \mathbf{g}^T \mathbf{H} \mathbf{g}.$$

There are three terms here: the original value of the function, the expected improvement due to the slope of the function, and the correction we must apply to account for the curvature of the function. When this last term is too large, the gradient descent step can actually move uphill.

Goodfellow, Ian; Bengio, Yoshua; Courville, Aaron; Bach, Francis. Deep Learning (Page 85).

I have a couple of points of confusion with regards to this explanation:

1. Which term is the expected improvement due to the slope of the function, and which is the correction we must apply to account for the curvature of the function?

2. Why do we need a "correction" to account for the curvature of the function?

3. Can someone please elaborate on, and be more specific with regards to, what is meant by "when this last term is too large, the gradient descent step can actually move uphill."?

I would greatly appreciate it if people could please take the time to clarify this.

EDIT:

With regards to my first question, I deduced from here that the term $$- \epsilon \mathbf{g}^T \mathbf{g}$$ is the improvement due to the slope of the function (the improvement in error afforded by the magnitude of the gradient), and the term $$\dfrac{1}{2} \epsilon^2 \mathbf{g}^T \mathbf{H} \mathbf{g}$$ is the correction to account for the curvature of the function (correction term that incorporates the curvature of the surface as represented by the Hessian matrix).

But, as far as I can tell, $$- \epsilon \mathbf{g}^T \mathbf{g}$$ isn't a magnitude, since, on an $$n$$-dimensional Euclidean space $$\mathbb{R}^n$$, the magnitude/norm/$$2$$-norm/$$L^2$$-norm of a vector $$\mathbf{x} = (x_1, x_2, \dots, x_n)$$ is $$||\mathbf{x}||_2 = \sqrt{x_1^2 + x_2^2 + \dots + x_n^2}$$. So how is it the "improvement in error afforded by the magnitude of the gradient"?

• Is Bach an author on the Deep Learning book? – littleO Oct 20 '18 at 3:32
• @littleO He is according to the Kindle version. I simply posted the automatic citation. – The Pointer Oct 20 '18 at 3:34
• That's interesting, because he is not listed as an author on the book's webpage, unless I'm missing something. – littleO Oct 20 '18 at 3:36

Let's break Taylor's theorem down a bit. The best linear approximation to $$f$$ at any given point $$x$$ is given by the first-order Taylor series: $$f(x + v) \approx f(x) + \nabla f(x)^T v,$$ where the error is $$o(\|v\|)$$. You can visualize this for $$f : \mathbb R^2 \to \mathbb R$$ by realizing that the graph of the linear approximation is the plane tangent to the graph of $$f$$ at $$x$$. This is true in higher dimensions, too; just replace "plane" with "hyperplane".

Gradient descent is basically what happens when you attempt to take the best possible step towards minimizing $$f$$, using only this linear approximation. Since the approximation is linear, it has no local extrema, and especially is not convex. Hence we can't actually locally minimize --- the best that we can do is go along its steepest downward slope. But we can't just go down this slope forever --- we would never stop, because there is no minimum to the linear approximation. Another way to think about this is that the linear approximation contains only directional information. The "learning rate" $$\epsilon$$ basically says "how close to $$x$$ do I actually trust my linear approximation --- how far am I willing to step along this gradient?"

Now on to the second-order term: Taylor's theorem says that the best quadratic approximation of $$f$$ at $$x$$ is given by the second-order Taylor series: $$f(x) \approx f(x) + \nabla f(x)^Tv + \frac{1}{2} v^TH(x)v,$$ where the error is $$o(\|v\|^2)$$. You can picture the graph as something similar to a "tangent paraboloid" at $$x$$. Hence you can think of the second-order term as a "correction" factor to the linear approximation, adding in local curvature information on top of the $$\nabla f(x)^Tv$$ term. If you need convincing that the Hessian provides curvature information, recall that $$\det H(x)$$ is the Gaussian curvature of the graph of $$f$$ at $$x$$ (this fact was probably called the second partial derivative test in your 3D calc class).

It should be clear from this dicussion that, using only the linear approximation (gradient descent), we can't go very far at all and still have a good approximation of $$f$$ (unless $$f$$ is very close to linear), and in particular there's no reason why a sufficiently large step along the gradient wouldn't increase $$f$$. Similarly, the author should note that the same thing can happen with the second-order approximation --- step too far, and the approximation diverges from $$f$$ sufficiently that we have no idea whether $$f$$ will increase or decrease!

Re: your question about $$g^Tg$$ as a magnitude, note that $$\| g \|_2 = \sqrt{g^Tg}$$ --- this is often in fact taken as the definition of the Euclidean norm.

Edit --- I think I misunderstood your question about the gradient magnitude; let me try again:

Let $$g = \nabla f(x)$$. When computing the gradient descent step, the optimal direction is parallel to $$- g$$, i.e. the negative gradient. The actual step that we take (call it $$v$$), is parallel to the gradient, with some chosen step size: $$v = -\varepsilon g.$$ Hence the improvement that comes from the linear approximation is $$(f(x) + g^T v) - f(x) = g^T v = - \varepsilon g^T g.$$ so I think that "improvement afforded by the magnitude of the gradient" is not quite accurate --- the "magnitude of the gradient" isn't really a variable; it's your choice of learning rate $$\varepsilon$$ that controls the amount of improvement.

• Thanks for the answer, Adam. Can you please clarify what $o(\|v\|)$ means? I'm familiar with "big-O" notation, but, after reading the Wikipedia page for "little-o" notation, I still don't understand what $o(\|v\|)$ means in this context. – The Pointer Oct 19 '18 at 12:57
• And I just finished reading your entire post. It is very clear, and I found it very enlightening. Thank you very much for taking the time to post this. One question about the last part: The point I was making was that we have $\epsilon \mathbf{g}^T \mathbf{g}$, though, not $\| \epsilon g \|_2 = \epsilon \sqrt{g^Tg}$. Since $\epsilon \mathbf{g}^T \mathbf{g}$ isn't a magnitude/norm, where does the idea of this come from? I don't see how you got $\| \epsilon g \|_2 = \epsilon \sqrt{g^Tg}$ from the Taylor series? – The Pointer Oct 19 '18 at 13:57
• 1) $o(\|v\|)$ just means "goes to zero faster than $\|v\|$", or, "is negligible when $\|v\|$ is small". 2) Don't get hung up on the distinction between $\|g\|$ and $\|g\|^2$. They just mean that the improvement in error is controlled by the magnitude of the gradient --- $\epsilon g^Tg$ is a function of this quantity. – Adam Williams Oct 19 '18 at 15:29
• Everything you said in your edit clarifies this concept completely. Thank you very much for taking the time to explain this! :) – The Pointer Oct 20 '18 at 2:24
• Just a note of clarity to myself: The gradient points in the direction of greatest increase; therefore, since we want to minimise the function, the optimal direction is parallel to $- g$, i.e. the negative gradient. – The Pointer Oct 20 '18 at 2:24