Analyzing Echo-state Networks Using Fractal Dimension

This work joins aspects of reservoir optimization, information-theoretic optimal encoding, and at its center fractal analysis. We build on the observation that, due to the recursive nature of recurrent neural networks, input sequences appear as fractal patterns in their hidden state representation. These patterns have a fractal dimension that is lower than the number of units in the reservoir. We show potential usage of this fractal dimension with regard to optimization of recurrent neural network initialization. We connect the idea of "ideal" reservoirs to lossless optimal encoding using arithmetic encoders. Our investigation suggests that the fractal dimension of the mapping from input to hidden state shall be close to the number of units in the network. This connection between fractal dimension and network connectivity is an interesting new direction for recurrent neural network initialization and reservoir computing.