Curriculum Learning for Graph Neural Networks: A Multiview Competence-based Approach
This work addresses the limitation of single-criterion difficulty in curriculum learning for graph neural networks, offering a more fine-grained method for researchers and practitioners in graph-based machine learning applications.
The paper tackles the problem of curriculum learning for graph neural networks by proposing a multiview competence-based approach that incorporates multiple graph difficulty criteria and model competence during training, achieving improved performance on real-world link prediction and node classification tasks.
A curriculum is a planned sequence of learning materials and an effective one can make learning efficient and effective for both humans and machines. Recent studies developed effective data-driven curriculum learning approaches for training graph neural networks in language applications. However, existing curriculum learning approaches often employ a single criterion of difficulty in their training paradigms. In this paper, we propose a new perspective on curriculum learning by introducing a novel approach that builds on graph complexity formalisms (as difficulty criteria) and model competence during training. The model consists of a scheduling scheme which derives effective curricula by accounting for different views of sample difficulty and model competence during training. The proposed solution advances existing research in curriculum learning for graph neural networks with the ability to incorporate a fine-grained spectrum of graph difficulty criteria in their training paradigms. Experimental results on real-world link prediction and node classification tasks illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.