seniorCost Function
How does cost function scaling affect numerical stability in deep learning?
Updated May 15, 2026
Short answer
Improper scaling can cause gradient explosion or vanishing issues.
Deep explanation
Cost functions with large magnitude outputs can lead to unstable gradients during backpropagation. Similarly, very small values can cause underflow and slow learning. Proper normalization, loss scaling, and mixed precision training are used to stabilize computation.
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