On preradicals, persistence, and the flow of information

Abstract

We use Category Theory notions to explore the conceptual axiom that, in a general sense, information flows through a neural network following a path of “least resistance”. To this end, we consider particular endofunctors, called preradicals, whereby we describe persistence in small shape diagrams defined in R-Mod. Specifically, we show that the α preradicals naturally describe persistence in commutative G-modules, for G a directed acyclic graph. Then, we use this results to generalize the notion of persistence to any diagram labeled by a quiver Q. These results, in turn, set the theoretical foundation for our formal framework that explores the notion of “paths of least resistance”. Lastly, we provide a notion of entropy for preradicals in R-Mod, and prove that it respects the order and operations between preradicals.