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Sagan

Paper

A Closed-Form Upper Bound for Admissible Learning-Rate Steps in Belief-Space Dynamics

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AI summary

The authors derive a closed-form upper bound for how large a learning-rate step can be while still guaranteeing that an update "contracts" the model's beliefs in KL-divergence terms. Instead of treating learning rate as a hyperparameter you tune empirically, they model updates as projected steps on the probability simplex and compute the maximum step size that keeps the update well-behaved in the natural information geometry.

Main takeaways:

  • Provides a formula (not a tuning heuristic) for the largest safe learning-rate step
  • Models updates as projected forward steps on the probability simplex
  • Step is "admissible" if it's contractive in KL/Bregman geometry
  • Positions learning-rate choice as a geometric calculation rather than pure trial-and-error