Reducing the Search Space for Hyperparameter Optimization Using Group Sparsity

Abstract

We propose a new algorithm for hyperparameter selection in machine learning algorithms. The algorithm is a novel modification of Harmonica, a spectral hyperparameter selection approach using sparse recovery methods. In particular, we show that a special encoding of hyperparameter space enables a natural group-sparse recovery formulation, which when coupled with HyperBand (a multi-armed bandit strategy) leads to improvement over existing hyperparameter optimization methods such as Successive Halving and Random Search. Experimental results on image datasets such as CIFAR-10 confirm the benefits of our approach.