CareerByteCode

Activation Function Calculator

For deep learning students and interview candidates who want to check activation values and gradients. You get f(x), the derivative at x, a short description and sample values from -2 to 2.

FreeRuns in your browserNothing uploadedNo sign-up neededAll 10 tools in the ML Toolbox
Keep this resultSign in to email it to yourself or save it to your profile. The tool itself never needs an account.

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How to use

How to use the Activation Explorer

  1. Pick a function: relu, leaky, sigmoid, tanh, gelu or softplus.
  2. Enter an input value x.
  3. Read f(x) and the derivative, which update as you type.
  4. Use the sample values at -2, -1, 0, 1 and 2 to see the shape.
Worked example

An example, step by step

You enter

sigmoid, x = 1.5

The tool shows

sigmoid(1.5) = 0.81757, derivative 0.14915

FAQ

Questions about the Activation Explorer

Why is ReLU used more than sigmoid in hidden layers?

ReLU is cheap and keeps a gradient of 1 for positive inputs, while sigmoid saturates and its derivative is at most 0.25, which leads to vanishing gradients in deep networks.

What is the derivative of the sigmoid function?

It is s(x) times 1 minus s(x), where s is the sigmoid. At x = 0 it peaks at 0.25.

What is GELU and where is it used?

GELU is a smooth ReLU-like function that weights inputs by their probability under a normal distribution. It is the default in Transformer models such as BERT and GPT; the tool uses the common tanh approximation.

Is the Activation Explorer free and private?

Yes. It is free, needs no sign-up and runs entirely in your browser, so what you type is not uploaded. You only sign in if you want to email a result to yourself or save it to your CareerByteCode profile.

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