# SITHCon: A neural network robust to variations in input scaling on the time dimension. (arXiv:2107.04616v1 [cs.LG])

In machine learning, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been extremely
influential in both computer vision and in recognizing patterns extended over
time. In computer vision, part of the flexibility arises from the use of
max-pooling operations over the convolutions to attain translation invariance.
In the mammalian brain, neural representations of time use a set of temporal
basis functions. Critically, these basis functions appear to be arranged in a
geometric series such that the basis set is evenly distributed over logarithmic
time. This paper introduces a Scale-Invariant Temporal History Convolution
network (SITHCon) that uses a logarithmically-distributed temporal memory. A
max-pool over a logarithmically-distributed temporal memory results in
scale-invariance in time. We compare performance of SITHCon to a Temporal
Convolution Network (TCN) and demonstrate that, although both networks can
learn classification and regression problems on both univariate and
multivariate time series $f(t)$, only SITHCon has the property that it
generalizes without retraining to rescaled versions of the input $f(at)$. This
property, inspired by findings from neuroscience and psychology, could lead to
large-scale networks with dramatically different capabilities, including faster
training and greater generalizability, even with significantly fewer free
parameters.