# To normalize or not to normalize a Neural or Universal ODE

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/to-normalize-or-not-to-normalize-a-neural-or-universal-ode/81124>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question, ode\
**Created:** [May 16, 2022, 12:45am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/to-normalize-or-not-to-normalize-a-neural-or-universal-ode/81124 "2022-05-16T00:45:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![00krishna](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/00krishna/32/8843_2.png) [@00krishna](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/00krishna)\
**Post date:** [May 16, 2022, 12:45am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/to-normalize-or-not-to-normalize-a-neural-or-universal-ode/81124/1 "2022-05-16T00:45:56Z")

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Hey folks. I have been working on creating a Neural ODE and a Universal ODE for a 6 compartment model. One common neural network practice is to normalize the inputs to be between 0 and 1. For example in a convolutional neural net, the 3 channel 8bit image with color range from 0 to 255 per channel is normalized to the range of 0,1 per channel. In a Neural ODE or Universal ODE context this means normalizing the actual training data to be between 0,1 for each group. As a result of normalizing, I would also obtain outputs or predictions that were between 0,1.

Now in looking at the Universal ODE github repo, and the examples for NeuralODE in `DiffEqFlux`, I have not seen anyone normalize their Neural ODE/ Universal ODE training data and predictions. Hence I was wondering if anyone knows whether normalizing helps the performance of these Neural ODE models, or if it makes no difference. Thanks.

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**Author:** ![ChrisRackauckas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/chrisrackauckas/32/77_2.png) [@ChrisRackauckas](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ChrisRackauckas)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2022, 4:35am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/to-normalize-or-not-to-normalize-a-neural-or-universal-ode/81124/2 "2022-05-20T04:35:22Z")

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It probably helps. We just haven’t done much of it.

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**Author:** ![00krishna](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/00krishna/32/8843_2.png) [@00krishna](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/00krishna)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2022, 4:58am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/to-normalize-or-not-to-normalize-a-neural-or-universal-ode/81124/3 "2022-05-20T04:58:19Z")

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I will give it a try and see what happens. It is worth an experiment.