stat.MLOct 15, 2026

Dimension-Free PAC-Bayes Generalization for Deep Neural Networks via Dirichlet Processes

Authors: Sumit Vashishtha

Organizations: Independent Researcher

Abstract

Classical PAC-Bayesian generalization theory places prior distributions over Euclidean parameter space Θ⊆RDΘ\subseteq \mathbb{R}^D, causing relative entropy to scale with network dimension DD. For modern overparameterized neural networks where D≫nD \gg n, this parameter-counting dependency yields vacuous generalization bounds (>1,000%> 1{,}000\%). In this work, we resolve this barrier by shifting prior specification from internal parameters to the non-parametric space of data distributions M1(Z)\mathcal{M}_1(\mathcal{Z}) via a Dirichlet Process (DP), DP(α,F0)\mathcal{DP}(α, F_0), inducing parameter distributions through push-forward measures under the learning algorithm. By the Data Processing Inequality, parameter-space relative entropy is strictly bounded by the data-space DP divergence, which we evaluate in exact closed form using Digamma functions. The resulting PAC-Bayesian certificate is strictly invariant to network parameter count DD, width, and depth. On intrinsic d∗d^*-dimensional submanifolds, optimal partition scaling achieves the minimax non-parametric rate O(n−1/(d∗+2)ln⁡n)\mathcal{O}(n^{-1/(d^*+2)} \sqrt{\ln n}). Across vision architectures scaling up to 4.2 million parameters (D=7,850D = 7{,}850 to D=4,203,522D = 4{,}203{,}522) on the full MNIST benchmark, while classical weight-space bounds scale past 940%940\% (becoming vacuous), our data-space DP-PAC-Bayes certificate remains stable, non-vacuous, and certified at \textbf{8.8%8.8\%--9.4%9.4\%}.

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Appendix

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