Towards better understanding of gradient-based attribution methods for Deep Neural Networks

Abstract

Understanding the flow of information in Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) is a challenging problem that has gain increasing attention over the last few years. While several methods have been proposed to explain network predictions, only a few attempts to analyze them from a theoretical perspective have been made in the past. In this work, we analyze various state-of-the-art attribution methods and prove unexplored connections between them. We also show how some methods can be reformulated and more conveniently implemented. Finally, we perform an empirical evaluation with six attribution methods on a variety of tasks and architectures and discuss their strengths and limitations.