The power of deeper networks for expressing natural functions

Understand

It is well-known that neural networks are universal approximators, but that deeper networks tend in practice to be more powerful than shallower ones.

• We shed light on this by proving that the total number of neurons $m$ required to approximate natural classes of multivariate polynomials of $n$ variables grows only linearly with $n$ for deep neural networks, but grows exponentially when merely a single hidden layer is allowed.
• We also provide evidence that when the number of hidden layers is increased from $1$ to $k$, the neuron requirement grows exponentially not with $n$ but with $n^{1/k}$, suggesting that the minimum number of layers required for practical expressibility grows only logarithmically with $n$.