HackerPapers

arXiv:2104.13478cs.LG

Geometric Deep Learning: Grids, Groups, Graphs, Geodesics, and Gauges

Michael M. Bronstein, Joan Bruna, Taco Cohen, Petar Veličković

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed an experimental revolution in data science and machine learning, epitomised by deep learning methods. Indeed, many high-dimensional learning tasks previously thought to be beyond reach -- such as computer vision, playing Go, or protein folding -- are in fact feasible with appropriate computational scale. Remarkably, the essence of deep learning is built from two simple algorithmic principles: first, the notion of representation or feature learning, whereby adapted, often hierarchical, features capture the appropriate notion of regularity for each task, and second, learning by local gradient-descent type methods, typically implemented as backpropagation. While learning generic functions in high dimensions is a cursed estimation problem, most tasks of interest are not generic, and come with essential pre-defined regularities arising from the underlying low-dimensionality and structure of the physical world. This text is concerned with exposing these regularities through unified geometric principles that can be applied throughout a wide spectrum of applications. Such a 'geometric unification' endeavour, in the spirit of Felix Klein's Erlangen Program, serves a dual purpose: on one hand, it provides a common mathematical framework to study the most successful neural network architectures, such as CNNs, RNNs, GNNs, and Transformers. On the other hand, it gives a constructive procedure to incorporate prior physical knowledge into neural architectures and provide principled way to build future architectures yet to be invented.

arXiv comments
156 pages. Work in progress -- comments welcome!
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cs.LGMachine Learning cs.AIArtificial Intelligence cs.CGComputational Geometry cs.CVComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition stat.MLMachine Learning (Statistics)

On Hacker News

Linked by 6 identifiable commenters in 8 comments across 8 threads, from May 2021 to Sep 2025. Found in 5 HN submissions from Apr 2021 to Sep 2025. Open submission discussions.

Comments linking this paper, per year.

Discussed in comments8 threads

    • Check out this 156-page tome: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13478: "Geometric Deep Learning: Grids, Groups, Graphs, Geodesics, and Gauges" The intro says that it "...serves a dual purpose: on one hand, it provides a common mathematical framework to study the most successful neural…

      r-bryanView on HNParent context

  1. Spherical CNNs (2018) 1 comment
    • also relevant to 3d modeling of molecules using in drug discovering modeling -- and a subset of these authors have published along those lines more recently -- for e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13478

      smathView on HNParent context

    • I am a big fan of “Geometric Deep Learning” and the view the authors propose. There is also a series of lectures. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13478

      PartiallyTypedView on HNParent context

    • +1 for probability via measure theory & functional analysis I would add the need for geometry and topology becoming more of a pre-requisite for picking up modern methods: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13478

      0xBABAD00CView on HNParent context

    • I recommend against DL by Goodfellow. At this point it is pretty much outdated. Actually, anything specific to NNs is already outdated by release. You'd need the following background: - Linear Algebra - Multivariate Calculus - Probability theory && Statistics Then you need a…

      PartiallyTypedView on HNParent context

    • You may be interested in [1] where they go to a great extend to show that the convolution operation that we consider in DL is the dual of fourier series [2]. [1] https://geometricdeeplearning.com [2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.13478.pdf page 27 (23 if you count book pages).

      PartiallyTypedView on HNParent context

    • Tweet with other links: https://twitter.com/mmbronstein/status/1404380398856060932 Paper (PDF): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.13478.pdf Blog post: https://towardsdatascience.com/geometric-foundations-of-deep...

      dplarsonView on HNParent context

    • Direct link to 156pp paper (an absolutely elegant read): Geometric Deep Learning: Grids, Groups, Graphs, Geodesics, and Gauges https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13478 Stanford CS224W: Machine Learning with Graphs https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rPLKxIpqhjh...

      ArtWombView on HNParent context

Submitted to Hacker News

Connected through shared HN threads, not inferred similarity or a recommendation.