Data Optimization in Deep Learning: A Survey
Ou Wu Rujing Yao
Large-scale, high-quality data are considered an essential factor for the
successful application of many deep learning techniques. Meanwhile, numerous
real-world deep learning tasks still have to contend with the lack of
sufficient amounts of high-quality data. Additionally, issues such as model
robustness, fairness, and trustworthiness are also closely related to training
data. Consequently, a huge number of studies in the existing literature have
focused on the data aspect in deep learning tasks. Some typical data
optimization techniques include data augmentation, logit perturbation, sample
weighting, and data condensation. These techniques usually come from different
deep learning divisions and their theoretical inspirations or heuristic
motivations may seem unrelated to each other. This study aims to organize a
wide range of existing data optimization methodologies for deep learning from
the previous literature, and makes the effort to construct a comprehensive
taxonomy for them. The constructed taxonomy considers the diversity of split
dimensions, and deep sub-taxonomies are constructed for each dimension. On the
basis of the taxonomy, connections among the extensive data optimization
methods for deep learning are built in terms of four aspects. We probe into
rendering several promising and interesting future directions. The constructed
taxonomy and the revealed connections will enlighten the better understanding
of existing methods and the design of novel data optimization techniques.
Furthermore, our aspiration for this survey is to promote data optimization as
an independent subdivision of deep learning. A curated, up-to-date list of
resources related to data optimization in deep learning is available at
\url{https://github.com/YaoRujing/Data-Optimization}.