Learning Compact Convolutional Neural Networks with Nested Dropout

Recently, nested dropout was proposed as a method for ordering representation units in autoencoders by their information content, without diminishing reconstruction cost (Rippel et al., 2014). However, it has only been applied to training fully-connected autoencoders in an unsupervised setting. We explore the impact of nested dropout on the convolutional layers in a CNN trained by backpropagation, investigating whether nested dropout can provide a simple and systematic way to determine the optimal representation size with respect to the desired accuracy and desired task and data complexity.