← All parts of this equation

Equation 7 · Part 6 · How a Model Actually Gets Small Enough to Run on a Phone

Symbol z_s

LKD=α LCE(y,σ(zs))+(1−α) T2 KL(σ(zt/T) ∥ σ(zs/T))\mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{KD}} = \alpha \, \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{CE}}\left(y, \sigma(z_s)\right) + (1-\alpha)\, T^2 \, \mathrm{KL}\left(\sigma(z_t / T) \,\Vert\, \sigma(z_s / T)\right)
zsz_s

What this part means

zsz_s is one of the signed contributions combined to compute the quantity on the left.

Its job in the formula

zsz_s is one of the signed contributions combined to compute the quantity on the left.

The passage around this formula

At T=1 this is the ordinary softmax used for prediction. Raising T flattens the distribution, pulling the small probabilities assigned to wrong classes up toward visibility, which is exactly the dark knowledge the method wants to expose. The training objective blends two terms: ordinary cross-entropy against the true label, and a match between the student’s and teacher’s temperature-softened distributions, measured by KL divergence: LKD=α LCE(y,σ(zs))+(1−α) T2 KL(σ(zt/T) ∥ σ(zs/T))\mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{KD}} = \alpha \, \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{CE}}\left(y, \sigma(z_s)\right) + (1-\alpha)\, T^2 \, \mathrm{KL}\left(\sigma(z_t / T) \,\Vert\, \sigma(z_s / T)\right). The T2T^2 factor is not decorative. Hinton and colleagues note that because the magnitude of the gradients produced by the soft-target term scales as 1/T2T^2 , multiplying the term by T2T^2 keeps the relative contribution of the two loss terms…

Read this part in the article →

Learn the underlying idea

A subscript is a label attached below a symbol. It often selects a time step, component, category, or member of a sequence.

Open the illustrated subscripts: which member of a family? guide →

See this notation across published equations →

Sources cited in the surrounding passage

These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.