Inspired by the pioneering work of the information bottleneck (IB) principle for Deep Neural Networks' (DNNs) analysis, we thoroughly study the relationship among the model accuracy, I ( X ; T ) and I ( T ; Y ) , where I ( X ; T ) and I ( T ; Y ) are the mutual information of DNN's output T with input X and label Y. Then, we design an information plane-based framework to evaluate the capability of DNNs (including CNNs) for image classification. Instead of each hidden layer's output, our framework focuses on the model output T. We successfully apply our framework to many application scenarios arising in deep learning and image classification problems, such as image classification with unbalanced data distribution, model selection, and transfer learning. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of the information plane-based framework: Our framework may facilitate a quick model selection and determine the number of samples needed for each class in the unbalanced classification problem. Furthermore, the framework explains the efficiency of transfer learning in the deep learning area.
Keywords: image classification; information bottleneck; mutual information; neural networks.