[Machine Learning] Gradient Checking

Gradient checking will assure that our backpropagation works as intended. We can approximate the derivative of our cost function with:

 

epsilon = 1e-4;
for i = 1:n,
  thetaPlus = theta;
  thetaPlus(i) += epsilon;
  thetaMinus = theta;
  thetaMinus(i) -= epsilon;
  gradApprox(i) = (J(thetaPlus) - J(thetaMinus))/(2*epsilon)
end;

We previously saw how to calculate the deltaVector. So once we compute our gradApprox vector, we can check that gradApprox ≈ deltaVector.

Once you have verified once that your backpropagation algorithm is correct, you don't need to compute gradApprox again. The code to compute gradApprox can be very slow.