A Step by Step Backpropagation Example

Background

Backpropagation is a common method for training a neural network. There is no shortage of papers online that attempt to explain how backpropagation works, but few that include an example with actual numbers. This post is my attempt to explain how it works with a concrete example that folks can compare their own calculations to in order to ensure they understand backpropagation correctly.

Backpropagation in Python

You can play around with a Python script that I wrote that implements the backpropagation algorithm in this Github repo.

Backpropagation Visualization

For an interactive visualization showing a neural network as it learns, check out my Neural Network visualization.

Additional Resources

If you find this tutorial useful and want to continue learning about neural networks, machine learning, and deep learning, I highly recommend checking out Adrian Rosebrock’s new book, Deep Learning for Computer Vision with Python. I really enjoyed the book and will have a full review up soon.

Overview

For this tutorial, we’re going to use a neural network with two inputs, two hidden neurons, two output neurons. Additionally, the hidden and output neurons will include a bias.

Here’s the basic structure:

neural_network (7)

In order to have some numbers to work with, here are the initial weights, the biases, and training inputs/outputs:

neural_network (9)

The goal of backpropagation is to optimize the weights so that the neural network can learn how to correctly map arbitrary inputs to outputs.

For the rest of this tutorial we’re going to work with a single training set: given inputs 0.05 and 0.10, we want the neural network to output 0.01 and 0.99.

The Forward Pass

To begin, lets see what the neural network currently predicts given the weights and biases above and inputs of 0.05 and 0.10. To do this we’ll feed those inputs forward though the network.

We figure out the total net input to each hidden layer neuron, squash the total net input using an activation function (here we use the logistic function), then repeat the process with the output layer neurons.

Total net input is also referred to as just net input by some sources.

Here’s how we calculate the total net input for h_1:

net_{h1} = w_1 * i_1 + w_2 * i_2 + b_1 * 1

net_{h1} = 0.15 * 0.05 + 0.2 * 0.1 + 0.35 * 1 = 0.3775

We then squash it using the logistic function to get the output of h_1:

out_{h1} = \frac{1}{1+e^{-net_{h1}}} = \frac{1}{1+e^{-0.3775}} = 0.593269992

Carrying out the same process for h_2 we get:

out_{h2} = 0.596884378

We repeat this process for the output layer neurons, using the output from the hidden layer neurons as inputs.

Here’s the output for o_1:

net_{o1} = w_5 * out_{h1} + w_6 * out_{h2} + b_2 * 1

net_{o1} = 0.4 * 0.593269992 + 0.45 * 0.596884378 + 0.6 * 1 = 1.105905967

out_{o1} = \frac{1}{1+e^{-net_{o1}}} = \frac{1}{1+e^{-1.105905967}} = 0.75136507

And carrying out the same process for o_2 we get:

out_{o2} = 0.772928465

Calculating the Total Error

We can now calculate the error for each output neuron using the squared error function and sum them to get the total error:

E_{total} = \sum \frac{1}{2}(target - output)^{2}

Some sources refer to the target as the ideal and the output as the actual.
The \frac{1}{2} is included so that exponent is cancelled when we differentiate later on. The result is eventually multiplied by a learning rate anyway so it doesn’t matter that we introduce a constant here [1].

For example, the target output for o_1 is 0.01 but the neural network output 0.75136507, therefore its error is:

E_{o1} = \frac{1}{2}(target_{o1} - out_{o1})^{2} = \frac{1}{2}(0.01 - 0.75136507)^{2} = 0.274811083

Repeating this process for o_2 (remembering that the target is 0.99) we get:

E_{o2} = 0.023560026

The total error for the neural network is the sum of these errors:

E_{total} = E_{o1} + E_{o2} = 0.274811083 + 0.023560026 = 0.298371109

The Backwards Pass

Our goal with backpropagation is to update each of the weights in the network so that they cause the actual output to be closer the target output, thereby minimizing the error for each output neuron and the network as a whole.

Output Layer

Consider w_5. We want to know how much a change in w_5 affects the total error, aka \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}}.

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}} is read as “the partial derivative of E_{total} with respect to w_{5}“. You can also say “the gradient with respect to w_{5}“.

By applying the chain rule we know that:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}} = \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{o1}} * \frac{\partial out_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} * \frac{\partial net_{o1}}{\partial w_{5}}

Visually, here’s what we’re doing:

output_1_backprop (4)

We need to figure out each piece in this equation.

First, how much does the total error change with respect to the output?

E_{total} = \frac{1}{2}(target_{o1} - out_{o1})^{2} + \frac{1}{2}(target_{o2} - out_{o2})^{2}

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{o1}} = 2 * \frac{1}{2}(target_{o1} - out_{o1})^{2 - 1} * -1 + 0

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{o1}} = -(target_{o1} - out_{o1}) = -(0.01 - 0.75136507) = 0.74136507

-(target - out) is sometimes expressed as out - target
When we take the partial derivative of the total error with respect to out_{o1}, the quantity \frac{1}{2}(target_{o2} - out_{o2})^{2} becomes zero because out_{o1} does not affect it which means we’re taking the derivative of a constant which is zero.

Next, how much does the output of o_1 change with respect to its total net input?

The partial derivative of the logistic function is the output multiplied by 1 minus the output:

out_{o1} = \frac{1}{1+e^{-net_{o1}}}

\frac{\partial out_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} = out_{o1}(1 - out_{o1}) = 0.75136507(1 - 0.75136507) = 0.186815602

Finally, how much does the total net input of o1 change with respect to w_5?

net_{o1} = w_5 * out_{h1} + w_6 * out_{h2} + b_2 * 1

\frac{\partial net_{o1}}{\partial w_{5}} = 1 * out_{h1} * w_5^{(1 - 1)} + 0 + 0 = out_{h1} = 0.593269992

Putting it all together:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}} = \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{o1}} * \frac{\partial out_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} * \frac{\partial net_{o1}}{\partial w_{5}}

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}} = 0.74136507 * 0.186815602 * 0.593269992 = 0.082167041

You’ll often see this calculation combined in the form of the delta rule:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}} = -(target_{o1} - out_{o1}) * out_{o1}(1 - out_{o1}) * out_{h1}

Alternatively, we have \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{o1}} and \frac{\partial out_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} which can be written as \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial net_{o1}}, aka \delta_{o1} (the Greek letter delta) aka the node delta. We can use this to rewrite the calculation above:

\delta_{o1} = \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{o1}} * \frac{\partial out_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} = \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial net_{o1}}

\delta_{o1} = -(target_{o1} - out_{o1}) * out_{o1}(1 - out_{o1})

Therefore:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}} = \delta_{o1} out_{h1}

Some sources extract the negative sign from \delta so it would be written as:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}} = -\delta_{o1} out_{h1}

To decrease the error, we then subtract this value from the current weight (optionally multiplied by some learning rate, eta, which we’ll set to 0.5):

w_5^{+} = w_5 - \eta * \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{5}} = 0.4 - 0.5 * 0.082167041 = 0.35891648

Some sources use \alpha (alpha) to represent the learning rate, others use \eta (eta), and others even use \epsilon (epsilon).

We can repeat this process to get the new weights w_6, w_7, and w_8:

w_6^{+} = 0.408666186

w_7^{+} = 0.511301270

w_8^{+} = 0.561370121

We perform the actual updates in the neural network after we have the new weights leading into the hidden layer neurons (ie, we use the original weights, not the updated weights, when we continue the backpropagation algorithm below).

Hidden Layer

Next, we’ll continue the backwards pass by calculating new values for w_1, w_2, w_3, and w_4.

Big picture, here’s what we need to figure out:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{1}} = \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{h1}} * \frac{\partial out_{h1}}{\partial net_{h1}} * \frac{\partial net_{h1}}{\partial w_{1}}

Visually:

nn-calculation

We’re going to use a similar process as we did for the output layer, but slightly different to account for the fact that the output of each hidden layer neuron contributes to the output (and therefore error) of multiple output neurons. We know that out_{h1} affects both out_{o1} and out_{o2} therefore the \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{h1}} needs to take into consideration its effect on the both output neurons:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{h1}} = \frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}} + \frac{\partial E_{o2}}{\partial out_{h1}}

Starting with \frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}}:

\frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}} = \frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} * \frac{\partial net_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}}

We can calculate \frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} using values we calculated earlier:

\frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} = \frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial out_{o1}} * \frac{\partial out_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} = 0.74136507 * 0.186815602 = 0.138498562

And \frac{\partial net_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}} is equal to w_5:

net_{o1} = w_5 * out_{h1} + w_6 * out_{h2} + b_2 * 1

\frac{\partial net_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}} = w_5 = 0.40

Plugging them in:

\frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}} = \frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial net_{o1}} * \frac{\partial net_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}} = 0.138498562 * 0.40 = 0.055399425

Following the same process for \frac{\partial E_{o2}}{\partial out_{h1}}, we get:

\frac{\partial E_{o2}}{\partial out_{h1}} = -0.019049119

Therefore:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{h1}} = \frac{\partial E_{o1}}{\partial out_{h1}} + \frac{\partial E_{o2}}{\partial out_{h1}} = 0.055399425 + -0.019049119 = 0.036350306

Now that we have \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{h1}}, we need to figure out \frac{\partial out_{h1}}{\partial net_{h1}} and then \frac{\partial net_{h1}}{\partial w} for each weight:

out_{h1} = \frac{1}{1+e^{-net_{h1}}}

\frac{\partial out_{h1}}{\partial net_{h1}} = out_{h1}(1 - out_{h1}) = 0.59326999(1 - 0.59326999 ) = 0.241300709

We calculate the partial derivative of the total net input to h_1 with respect to w_1 the same as we did for the output neuron:

net_{h1} = w_1 * i_1 + w_3 * i_2 + b_1 * 1

\frac{\partial net_{h1}}{\partial w_1} = i_1 = 0.05

Putting it all together:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{1}} = \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{h1}} * \frac{\partial out_{h1}}{\partial net_{h1}} * \frac{\partial net_{h1}}{\partial w_{1}}

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{1}} = 0.036350306 * 0.241300709 * 0.05 = 0.000438568

You might also see this written as:

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{1}} = (\sum\limits_{o}{\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial out_{o}} * \frac{\partial out_{o}}{\partial net_{o}} * \frac{\partial net_{o}}{\partial out_{h1}}}) * \frac{\partial out_{h1}}{\partial net_{h1}} * \frac{\partial net_{h1}}{\partial w_{1}}

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{1}} = (\sum\limits_{o}{\delta_{o} * w_{ho}}) * out_{h1}(1 - out_{h1}) * i_{1}

\frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{1}} = \delta_{h1}i_{1}

We can now update w_1:

w_1^{+} = w_1 - \eta * \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial w_{1}} = 0.15 - 0.5 * 0.000438568 = 0.149780716

Repeating this for w_2, w_3, and w_4

w_2^{+} = 0.19956143

w_3^{+} = 0.24975114

w_4^{+} = 0.29950229

Finally, we’ve updated all of our weights! When we fed forward the 0.05 and 0.1 inputs originally, the error on the network was 0.298371109. After this first round of backpropagation, the total error is now down to 0.291027924. It might not seem like much, but after repeating this process 10,000 times, for example, the error plummets to 0.0000351085. At this point, when we feed forward 0.05 and 0.1, the two outputs neurons generate 0.015912196 (vs 0.01 target) and 0.984065734 (vs 0.99 target).

If you’ve made it this far and found any errors in any of the above or can think of any ways to make it clearer for future readers, don’t hesitate to drop me a note. Thanks!

And while I have you…

In addition to dabbling in data science, I run Preceden timeline maker, the best timeline maker software on the web. If you ever need to create a high level timeline or roadmap to get organized or align your team, Preceden is a great option.

1,042 thoughts on “A Step by Step Backpropagation Example

  1. Machine Learning by Andrew Ng week 5 ( Summary ) - Jacob is studying on programming

  2. This is a gem! Thanks so much, Matt! You made me understand in an hour what a semester in grad school failed to do!

  3. Amazing article, can’t recommend enough ! Not ashamed to cover the math step by step which I am sure not every teacher is always willing to do. Understand it once and the rest will come with it.

  4. I just wanted to comment that this blog post has served me well for the last 4 years. I mess with neural networks as a hobby and while I mainly create art pieces that use the chaotic dynamics inherent in these networks, sometimes I like to play around with making something that can learn and this is my go-to read for remembering how to do backpropagation. It saves me so much time! So I’d just like to personally say thank you.

    • I have the same doubt! It’s a pity the author isn’t replying. I suppose he must’ve done it for the sake of simplicity but that would defeat the purpose of the article, wouldn’t it? Maybe as an empirical rule the biases for a layer are to be initialized as the same value?

      • I’m betting you just use the chain rule that he uses throughout and the summation that he uses for the hidden layers. Modifying what he says: “We know that b_{2} affects both out_{o1} and out_{o2} therefore the \frac{\partial E_{total}}{\partial b_{2}} needs to take into consideration its effect on the both output neurons”

  5. Great material! Thank you so much for your effort! Your idea of plugging numbers into the equation was a great aid in developing understanding and intuition behind this. Will read this many times over until required.

  6. This is an awesome tutorial, thank you very much. I only struggle at one point, namely the Backward Pass, Output Layer. You write

    E_Total = 1/2 (target_o1 – out_o1)^2 + 1/2 (target_o1 – out_o2)^2

    That is clear to me. But then the next line reads:

    φE_Total/φout_o1 = 2 * 1/2 (target_o1 – out_o1)^2-1 * -1 +0 <<– Where is the '-1' coming from? I spend an hour trying to understand it, but I just don't. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Hannah

    • If you use the correct partial-derivative without the -1, you would need to add the new weight onto the old one (not subtract them), so it’s a unexplained side-product that everyone seems to use.

    • 1/2 (target_o1 – out_o1)^2
      the derivative of this function states that:
      a) the exponent becomes the multiplier, so:
      1/2 (target_o1 – out_o1)^2
      becomes
      2 * 1/2 (target_o1 – out_o1)^2

      b) subtract 1 from the exponent, so:
      2 * 1/2 (target_o1 – out_o1)^2
      becomes
      2 * 1/2 (target_o1 – out_o1)^2-1

      c) the inner function g(x) = out_o1, so:
      2 * 1/2 (target_o1 – x)^2-1

      d) the “x” has 1 as exponent. The derivative states that it should be subtracted by 1, so:
      2 * 1/2 (target_o1 – x^1-1)^2-1
      which results in
      2 * 1/2 (target_o1 – x^0)^2-1

      e) every number powered by zero becomes 1, so:
      2 * 1/2 (target_o1 – 1)^2-1

      f) it is a composite function, so applying the chain rule:
      f′(g(x))⋅g′(x)

      g'(x) = -1

      the -1 is g'(x). The remaining before it is f'(g(x))

  7. Excellent story about backpropagation. I tried to make a C++ implementation. I managed to do the same numeric values for the weights. However there is no lines about the bias adjusting. Can biases b1 and b2 adjusted like weights, where the inputs always 1.0 ?
    Thanks

  8. PLEASE, answer me, the term d(E_o2)/d(out_h1) should be -0.02229036407211166… check pleaseeee
    Anyway, best explanation on internet

  9. I am unable to understand net_o1 = w_5 * out_h1 + w_6 * out_h2+ b_2 * 1. how does the derivative translate into 1 * out_h1 * w_5^(1 – 1) + 0 + 0 = out_h1 = 0.593269992, from where did w_5^(1-1) come from shouldnt it just be 1 * out_h1 * w_5^(1 – 1)

  10. I am unable to understand net_o1 = w_5 * out_h1 + w_6 * out_h2+ b_2 * 1. how does the derivative translate into1 * out_h1 * w_5^(1 – 1) + 0 + 0 = out_h1 = 0.593269992, from where did w_5^(1-1) come from shouldnt it just be 1 * out_h1 * w_5^(1 – 1)

  11. Man, you saved my life. I was looking for a proper, but easy to understand backprop tutorial. God bless you.

  12. why for updating w7 & w8 you put negative (-) on “the gradient with respect to w7”?
    I have no idea about this because at the first you didnt put (-) for updating w5 & w6. it is change my w7 & w8 updating result if I don’t use that (-)

  13. Hyperparameters for Classifying Images with Convolutional Neural Networks – Part 1 – Learning Rate – Ironman John

  14. Hyperparameters for Classifying Images with Convolutional Neural Networks – Part 2 – Batch Size – Ironman John

  15. This is the best tutorial on neural work! All textbooks should be written like this. Thank you very much!

  16. How is a neural network - Prog.world

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