Re:Backpropagation is a leaky abstraction
by quelltext on Monday December 19, 2016 @07:51PM
(#13216418)
The implementation is a black box but the performance characteristics could very well be part of the API contract. When you require and it's feasible to use radix sort you probably know not to use the standard sort function.
Re:Backpropagation is a leaky abstraction
by smallnamespace on Monday December 19, 2016 @08:05PM
(#13216478)
Yes, but reasoning about the API contract is exactly what being taught sorting algorithms helps you navigate, just like learning the guts of backprop helps the ML practitioner understand why things can go wrong.
Yes, if the performance is still not acceptable and you look into the problem and discover that your scenario could benefit from radix sort, or one of partial sorting, or some kind of intermittent sorting, all of which would require investigating the specific case at a "white box" level, ignoring the existence of a black-box O(n-log-n) sort API call.