tf.train.exponential_decay

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Applies exponential decay to the learning rate.

tf.train.exponential_decay(
    learning_rate, global_step, decay_steps, decay_rate, staircase=False, name=None
)

When training a model, it is often recommended to lower the learning rate as the training progresses. This function applies an exponential decay function to a provided initial learning rate. It requires a global_step value to compute the decayed learning rate. You can just pass a TensorFlow variable that you increment at each training step.

The function returns the decayed learning rate. It is computed as:

decayed_learning_rate = learning_rate *
                        decay_rate ^ (global_step / decay_steps)

If the argument staircase is True, then global_step / decay_steps is an integer division and the decayed learning rate follows a staircase function.

Example: decay every 100000 steps with a base of 0.96:

...
global_step = tf.Variable(0, trainable=False)
starter_learning_rate = 0.1
learning_rate = tf.compat.v1.train.exponential_decay(starter_learning_rate,
global_step,
                                           100000, 0.96, staircase=True)
# Passing global_step to minimize() will increment it at each step.
learning_step = (
    tf.compat.v1.train.GradientDescentOptimizer(learning_rate)
    .minimize(...my loss..., global_step=global_step)
)

Eager Compatibility

When eager execution is enabled, this function returns a function which in turn returns the decayed learning rate Tensor. This can be useful for changing the learning rate value across different invocations of optimizer functions.